Progress Case Studies Springer Takes Control of its Online Content Delivery
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Springer Takes Control of its Online Content Delivery

Progress
Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Data Management Platforms
Business Operation
Sales & Marketing
Software Design & Engineering Services
Springer, a leading scientific and medical publisher, faced challenges with its online content delivery platform, SpringerLink. The platform, which hosts over 8.4 million scientific documents, had become the core of the company's business, accounting for two-thirds of total revenue. However, Springer was relying on a third-party technology provider to power SpringerLink. As the importance of online content grew, Springer needed more control and flexibility over its content distribution. The company also faced a tight deadline to find a new solution, as its contract with the third-party provider was ending soon. Additionally, with the explosion of online content, readers were expecting better functionality from content providers, including faster search times.
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Springer is a leading scientific and medical publisher with a history spanning over 160 years. The company employs a staff of 6,000 employees worldwide and publishes more than 8,000 new book titles each year. In addition to its print publications, Springer maintains an online catalog of more than 169,000 eBooks and has the world's largest open access portfolio. The company's content delivery platform, SpringerLink, is the heart of its business, hosting more than 8.4 million scientific documents including journals, books, series, protocols, and reference works. SpringerLink was launched in 1996 and was one of the first publicly-available online content platforms. It initially housed some of the company's journals, but as online content became increasingly important, SpringerLink became the hub for every journal the company published, and later, its entire library of books.
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Springer chose the MarkLogic database as its new platform. This decision was based on the ability of the MarkLogic database to deliver more rich applications to their customers, creating a user experience that went beyond simply delivering a piece of content. Springer had previously built and deployed some high-performing applications using MarkLogic, including a tool to track the locations of document authors, a search engine for mathematicians, a program that displays snippets of scientific language in a publishing context, and Springerimages, a robust platform that allows users to search through millions of images stored in SpringerLink. The MarkLogic database surpassed expectations, helping Springer to create revenue, increase performance, boost user engagement, improve SpringerImages, foster an agile development process, simplify architecture, support multi-language search, and go to market quickly.
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SpringerLink is now the core of Springer's business, generating 95 percent of Springer's online revenue and driving more than two million page requests and over a million downloads a day.
During high-traffic periods, the new platform loads twice as fast as before, and runs essential functions up to four times faster than its previous system.
Since moving to MarkLogic, the time users spend on SpringerLink has increased by one-third, bounce rate has been cut in half, and the number of page views has grown significantly.
SpringerLink generates 95% of Springer's online revenue.
The new platform loads twice as fast as before during high-traffic periods.
Essential functions run up to four times faster than the previous system.
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