Paris, France – September 21, 2017 – MarkLogic Corporation, the leading operational and transactional Enterprise NoSQL database provider, announced that the Bayard Group, one of the oldest press and publishing companies founded over 140 years ago in France, is using MarkLogic’s next-generation database platform to enhance its online user experience and content distribution capabilities, advancing its digital transformation efforts.
To improve the overall performance of the company’s iconic daily newspaper’s website, La Croix (www.la-croix.com) and to personalize the user experience not only in terms of the graphic interface but also by giving users easy access to news, magazine’s archives and folders containing articles, photos and videos based around a theme, the Bayard Group developed a Digital Asset Management (DAM) system by creating a repository of articles, photos, books, illustrations and magazines to manage the large volumes of data in various formats.
Initially designed on a file management technology, the original system was suitable for storage, but unable to support the promotion of content. Faced with the challenge of increasing storage requirements and the business opportunity of making their content more widely available, moving to MarkLogic’s agile, secure and easily scalable NoSQL database platform allowed the company to take its digital presence to the next level. Leveraging the search engine integrated into MarkLogic, which enables “intelligent” searches to be carried out with its semantic functionality, the Bayard Group was able to integrate all of the Bayard and Milan Editions archives dating back from 2004, incorporate several thousand publications and full-text research permits, and enrich the content for more efficient reader search capabilities and a richer experience.
The development of the new site was completed in six months, including three months for the backend end management component. The project involved improving performance, absorbing spikes in website traffic and incorporating 800,000 articles into the database, with the entire infrastructure managed on Amazon’s cloud-based storage system.
The Bayard Print and Digital Press Group continued its editorial diversification and publication across a variety of media formats. With 150 magazines, 36 million readers, 8 million books sold per year, 150 websites throughout the world and a distribution-based strategy, the company’s objective is to promote its content as a knowledge base for its internal users, as well as to offer this content to its international partners.
After redesigning the website, www.la-croix.com, the company will restructure more of its websites, including www.notrefamille.com and www.notretemps.com, each with 4.5 million unique visitors. These projects are being built with the MarkLogic database, allowing the Bayard Group to improve content distribution, ensure greater synergy and enrich its content with metadata. On the DAM side, the next step is to add the production of company’s book editions. Then in 2018, the objective is to index the content within the magazines and books in its foreign subsidiaries, as well as in its digital media (books, etc.).
“MarkLogic’s next-generation NoSQL database platform has left a big impression. Its power, agility and performance, combined with its enterprise-grade security, and MarkLogic’s outstanding customer service, made the implementation of our digital transformation projects a success. Our la-croix.com website has been operational since January 2016, making it possible for us to generate new revenue, re-use our existing content, increase our audience and support our growth initiatives,” stated Vincent Blachier, Technology Manager for the Bayard Group.
“We are extremely impressed with what the Bayard Group has done. They have used our industry-leading NoSQL database platform to easily integrate all of their data, enabling them to dramatically enhance their user experience and continue their digital transformation efforts. The company has used our technology to its advantage to not only meet the needs of its users, but to adapt to the constant changes in the media market,” stated Stéphane Mahmoudi, Regional Sales Director, Southern Europe at MarkLogic.