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Ultimate Software

Company: Ultimate Software
Company Description: Ultimate Software (Nasdaq: ULTI), a leading provider of Web-based payroll and workforce management solutions, markets award-winning UltiPro® as licensed software, a hosted application through Intersourcing®, and a co-branded offering to Business Service Providers (BSPs) under the "Powered by UltiPro®" brand. The Company employs 415 professionals who are united in their commitment to developing trend-setting solutions and delivering quality service.  Ultimate Software customers represent diverse industries and include such organizations as The Arizona Diamondbacks/ Phoenix Suns, Benihana Restaurants, The Container Store, Elizabeth Arden, Omni Hotels, Ruth's Chris Steak House and Trammell Crow Residential.
Nomination Category: Organization Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Best Product Development Organization

Nomination Title: Ultimate Software's Product Development Team

  • Tell the story of what this functional organization has achieved in 2002 (up to 500 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:

    Ultimate Software’s Development team had two goals in 2002:

■ To deliver technology that would position the Company to execute on its mission to become the premier infrastructure provider of Internet payroll and workforce management solutions.

■ To satisfy a “technology transfer” condition in Ultimate’s contract with Ceridian (NYSE: CEN). This contract – the largest agreement ever signed in the HRMS/payroll industry – allows Ceridian to co-brand and re-market Ultimate’s UltiPro®, a workforce management (HRMS/payroll) solution, as Internet services. The terms require that Ceridian pay Ultimate from $42 million to $85 million over a 7-year period but, for those terms to hold, Ultimate had to complete the technology transfer by August 31, 2002.

To satisfy these goals, Development needed to completely re-architect UltiPro, already a Web-based product that had been rated on a par with the big ERP vendors, and to deliver it economically as Internet services. Since many businesses have ‘big company’ issues, but not ‘big company’ budgets, the challenge was to deliver comprehensive functionality, not just pieces of it – without the Fortune 500 price tag – and serve it up over Internet.

The key was designing the new UltiPro through Web Services technologies economically. It was imperative that UltiPro manage hundreds of companies securely and scale across multiple servers. Less hardware requirement, less cost. We also needed to automate back-office functions for managing payroll for thousands of companies with minimal human intervention. Less support infrastructure, better customer pricing/better margins.

To meet the objectives, Development had to create solutions to:

■ Manage security for several hundred unrelated companies on one server (and ultimately thousands of companies on many servers in a server farm) over the Internet

■ Develop hundreds more Web pages faster, ensuring a uniform “look and feel” and rapid rendering for the end-user

■ Maintain a track record of minimal errors/“bugs” while programming at break- neck speed to meet tighter deadlines

Solutions

■ Created a ‘Super Site’ (complementing other security levels) to help manage security for thousands of companies – with ‘gateway’ code identifying each user, the company they work for, and which server in the server farm houses that company database.

■ Created what Development calls an ‘Entity’ server, isolating the code for Web page controls in one place, giving Web pages a consistent “look and feel”. Pages render faster and developers can build pages quicker.

■ Decreased the business impact of errors/bugs by focusing on “upstream” activities like requirement inspections to optimize software quality for customers and our business success.

Results

■ Development delivered UltiPro 6.0 early – 3 days early – a rare feat in software development, and Ceridian accepted it as meeting our contractual obligations of ‘technology transfer’.

■ Hundreds of existing customers successfully upgraded to the new technology by Q1 2003.

■ The new Web Services architecture enabled Ultimate to sell UltiPro at the appealing price of $5 per employee per month in a hosted delivery model of UltiPro (branded as Intersourcing®). By December 2002, 45 businesses had signed up (representing 67,000 employees) and 14 businesses were ‘live’.

2. List hyperlinks to any online news stories, press releases, or other documents that support the claims made in the section above.
To include a URL you must begin and end the URL with a square-bracket and include http://
Example: [http://www.yourdomain.com]

The link below will take you to a secure area where you can view all of the supporting documents for this entry. A user name and password are required. http://area51.sbcadvertising.com/view.asp

User name: USGuest Password: u5v13w (case sensitive)

Should you have any difficulty in logging in or viewing any of the documents, please contact Jill Jameson at SBC Public Relations 614-891-7070. Thank you.

3. Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader(s) of this nominated functional organization:

Roy L. Gerber, Ph.D., Chief Technology Officer

As CTO, Ultimate Software, Roy Gerber is responsible for emerging technologies and new product development. He joined Ultimate Software in 1995, previously serving as Director and Vice President of Engineering. Prior to Ultimate Software, Gerber served as EVP, Development for Cascade Interactive Designs. He has a Ph.D. from Stanford University.

Adam Rogers, Senior Vice President, Development

Adam Rogers is senior vice president of development, Ultimate Software, responsible for product and project management, engineering, quality assurance and automation. He joined Ultimate Software in 1997 and now oversees development team of 130. Rogers attended the University of Florida where he studied software development and electrical engineering.