SAO Company Profile: Lunar Logic

By Kate McPherron

Eugene-based Lunar Logic is a privately owned custom software development firm that has become a leader at building high-end Web-based enterprise software solutions. The company partners with clients in collaborative and creative relationships to build solutions tailored to implement vision and goals at highly competitive prices. Lunar Logic has skillfully managed its rapid growth to become a multimillion-dollar company.

Mark Lipson, president and CEO, founded Lunar Logic in 1999 when he united his own unique talents as a programmer with those of a core group of designers and developers. Mark is an old-fashioned technology CEO: the kind who is as comfortable dealing with computer code as he is with economics and management. Lunar Logic grew out of Mark’s 20-plus years of professional experience in the computer field: from programming and serving as lead developer for a diverse array of projects to managing a number of Web startups.

Marshall L. Moseley, vice president of sales and marketing, also has more than 20 years’ experience in the software industry. He started his career as a programmer for the pioneering computer company Kaypro and became the technical editor for its user magazine, Profiles. He also has spent time as a technology analyst for Dataquest and as product manager for Borland Quattro Pro, and he was a product planner with the Desktop Applications Division of Microsoft. Marshall is the author of Working with Windows 3.1, from McGraw-Hill, and The Windows 3.1 Instant Reference, from Sybex books.

Q: What got you started in Eugene?

ML : The company was founded in Eugene because it happened to be where I and the original staff lived. This is an inspiring place to live and work, and there is an abundance of cultural stimulation opportunity. We benefit from a cost of living that’s below the national average and we pass those savings on to customers. Quality of life, on the other hand, is well above average and that draws top talent and expertise here

Being in a university town is clearly an advantage for us. We have two outstanding local computer science programs, at the University of Oregon and at Lane Community College. We also have the good fortune of having the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) in the same town, so we can have a world-renowned organization review our educational software.

MM: The lower cost of living as compared with other technology centers like Boston, Los Angeles, New York and the Bay Area is a big economic advantage, but there’s more to this area than just that. The company reflects a lot of the spirit of the town, since we get most of our staff from the Eugene area. The pool from which our company was staffed has great community pride and is involved, so they’re giving and participating people. Turnover is low and people are here because they have chosen to work here. We treat our employees like family, valuing their uniqueness and individualism.

The University of Oregon has a good computer science department, so we get some university alumni and a few people from Symantec, but there are many others, as well, because the town is very techie-friendy. When my wife and I were looking around for where we were going to live we were impressed by all that was here: the Hult Center, plays, art galleries and more. There are many features of a big city here, but you can drive across it in 15 minutes.

Q: What are your target markets?

MM: We have expertise in large Web applications and our target markets are those companies that need those applications. Obviously there’s a certain monetary threshold, but we try to find projects that we will enjoy working on. As we expand from working exclusively in higher education, we believe there are many companies on the cusp of a technology that don’t have the resources in-house but do need a digital presence ¾ more than the look an advertising Web site delivers. We’re talking about functional Web sites that deliver database horsepower. For example, we might create an automated distribution network or a Web-based interface to track delivery trucks in real-time via GPS. Essentially, we focus on powerful Web-enabled client-server applications. We seek out companies that are moving from organized paper-based systems toward automation. We have a lot of experience in that kind of thing and we enjoy it.

In terms of casting our net, we started a group to go after government and private RFP proposals. The group works with our tech people to look at RFPs and see if our experience meets the criteria, e.g., a government agency wants a SQL database to track trucks and where they are. But we still do work for higher education. The University of Oregon needed to manage print services and they turned to us recently to build an easy-to-use Web application that increased their efficiency and saved them thousands of dollars.

Q: What’s behind the company’s rapid growth in recent years?

ML: We had an intense growth spurt from just 30 employees in 2003 to around 150 employees today. In 2001, Thomson Higher Education came to us because they needed to add a multiuser online component to their math and science texts. Thomson was evolving from a textbook publisher to a technology company. We built the iLrn platform, currently used every day with hundreds of textbooks by tens of thousands of students across the United States and around the world. Thompson is still our biggest customer, but the ramp-up between 2001 and now that was required to build the product out has steadied. We’re doing the support we’ve always done, but the product is built.

MM: Our employee headcount varies a great deal because of the cyclical nature of the beginning of school years and academic sessions, when there is a greater demand for support for educational products. For the past two years, we’re brought many temporary employees into customer support to meet the need for support peaks between Labor Day and October and again in January.

Lunar Logic currently employs about 150 people, including programmers, quality-assurance engineers, technical support staff, system administrators, content specialists and technical writers. An internal survey revealed that our combined technical and subject-matter expertise added up to 150 years of experience with C++, 130 years with Java, 50 years with Perl, 200+ years with HTML and nearly 100 years with design. Six employees hold Ph.D. degrees in specialized subject areas ranging from mathematics to history, and eight others hold Master’s degrees in computer science, business and other subject areas.

Q: How did Thompson drive that growth?

ML: The textbook industry is fleeing toward technology as the used-book market becomes increasingly advanced through the Internet (the statistic I heard was that only 33 percent of textbooks “adopted” by schools lead to new-book purchases). Thomson in particular has embraced the trend toward technology, and is urging its operating companies in this direction. Five years ago, sales reps wanted something shiny to put in the back of their textbooks. Now, they can’t sell the books without a competitive set of online resources.

Lunar Logic created a Content Management System called iLrn ¾ an interactive suite of online tools that enable teachers to build and offer tutorials, quizzes and testing from electronic versions of Thomson textbooks in math, the sciences, languages, criminology and more, along with extensive gradebook features. iLrn makes it simple for teachers to create, assign and grade tests, for authors to create e-books, and for both Lunar Logic and third-party developers to create interactive tutorials that work with the content to make the material come alive for students.

The technological advances that iLrn brought to the field were obvious, and interest in the product grew. Thomson saw the continued development of the platform and rapid growth of the user base and turned to us to follow up and manage that success. We stepped up our efforts to make sure that iLrn was on a rock-solid foundation, adding ongoing processes for testing/QA, tech support and performance management. We perform extensive testing with black-box and white-box quality assurance and integrated unit testing methodologies. We maintain multitiered technical support (including a dedicated Rapid Response team) to deal with customer questions immediately. And we created and manage a nationwide distributed server architecture with load balancing and failover to ensure no interruptions.

iLrn now runs on more than 60 dedicated servers clustered around the country for optimal response time and monitored 24/7 by Lunar Logic system administrators.

There has been a noticeably large surge in acceptance of technology within universities. The traffic on iLrn triples each year. At our last count, iLrn is used by more than 2,000 educational institutions worldwide, sees more than 110,000 logins per day, and handles more than 3,000 simultaneous users while maintaining a response time of under a quarter of a second for each request.

Q: How did you learn from that growth?

ML: It has been challenging at times to have so much work from one customer. The accounting for 150 simultaneous projects is rather complicated, for instance. I would like to say, however, that the people we’ve worked with at Thomson are very bright, fun, energetic people, and we have quite a dynamic working relationship. We’ve learned quite a bit from each other.

MM: The experience doing iLrn taught us so many things: how to deploy a massive client-server application with users who are geographically remote; how to revise that application while it is being used; and even how to market to new customers when you’re blessed by as much work as you can handle. We learned two big things. First, we learned how to manage massive servers with 24/7 uptime. This puts us ahead of the game in comparison with other consultants. Many companies can write the application, but how many can deploy and maintain it? Second are the work processes and project-management methods that we learned and executed in doing multiple revisions to the product. It really taught us how to do that kind of software. There are many wizards here at Lunar Logic, but more important is the ability to work as a team to achieve these phenomenal results. This project gave us great expertise at the kind of project few developers see.

Q: Have you established any internal processes?

MM: The very best companies start by understanding themselves. We say we have “our own agile, interactive way of working with you” because we know how we like to work. At best, we prototype early, work on a daily basis with customers and course-correct whenever needed. That’s in contrast to other custom software companies that write a spec, go away, and come back eight months later with a project. Requirements change, environments change ¾ often very quickly ¾ so products need to be changed. We follow the process, we go back to the functional spec, rewrite it, rewrite the API, if necessary, and do due diligence. We work with the customer every day for the period of the project. We supply the tools they need to solve their business problems, and that’s built into the process from the beginning. We know from experience that if the spec is locked down for eight months, it becomes chaotic if the customer comes in with changes.

That said, nothing is dogma. We have a full set of tools and employ the process we need to get the job done. We respond to customer needs, too. There are a myriad of practices that customers would like us to use ¾ CMMI, PMBOK, etc. ¾ and we are happy to do so if the customer requires. But just as often, customers rely on us to decide how best to manage a project, and we have the personnel and experience that enables us to deploy those projects in a way that’s effective and fun, too.

ML: We have an extremely can-do attitude and a very agile set of processes, which has gone unusually well with the higher-ed publishing world. Being able to leapfrog the competition in months rather than years is something they value in us. We also happen to be a full-service organization. Our tech support group makes a huge difference in the success of our software, for instance, and they are successful largely because they have access to the developers.

Q: Why did you add a Polish subsidiary?

MM: I think a modern software company needs to recognize that software development is a global industry. The savvy businessperson knows that there are development resources that could be effectively deployed for less cost. We realized we could oppose the globalization trend or embrace it. Some of our personnel had ties to Poland and were willing to go over to Krakow and start the satellite office. Since our people started the firm, and we maintained our practices ¾ they’re part of our “culture” and we work with them as seamlessly as if they were here. It’s a great little group of people, and they help us in many ways. As an overflow mechanism they can jump in when we become resource constrained ¾ developers can work on an ad-hoc basis. When projects are really hot, there’s an advantage to the time difference between the West coast and Europe. Being 9 or 10 hours off means we can keep development going for almost 24 hours when you need it.

Q: Where will you go from here?

ML: Up until a year or so ago we were too busy swimming in Thomson work to even think about marketing. We came to the realization that it would be best for us to diversify. We are now training other vendors to share some of this ever-increasing workload, and starting to allow our work for other customers to flourish.

Our expansion plans depend quite a bit on which way business goes. Factors include the availability of skilled labor and the shape that our marketing strategy takes.

About the author

Kate McPherron, a technology evangelist, has helped technology and industrial firms manage and market their products and services for the past 20 years. She can be reached at klm54@cornell.edu.