Case Study

Manning Publications

Manning is an independent publisher of computer books for software developers, engineers, architects, system administrators, managers and all who are professionally involved with the computer business. We also publish for students and young programmers, including occasionally for children. We are an entirely virtual organization based on Shelter Island, New York, with many staff working from far-flung places like Manila and Zagreb.
"Independent" means we are not owned by a large corporate entity and are free to make decisions without bureaucratic overhead. That has allowed us to innovate and be flexible and to quickly adjust what we do as we go. We were the first by several years to sell our books as unprotected PDFs, something that later became commonplace. We were the first to start selling books before they were finished, in the Manning Early Access Program. This gave our readers access to our content as soon as it was readable, and this too has become common in the industry. And it means we are thinking every day about new ways to satisfy our customers, some of which we hope you will be pleased to discover in the not-too-distant future.

The Challenge

Case Study

Put simply:

How do we make Manning's content accessible without giving it away? How do we make the paywall porous?

The excellent content we have painstakingly helped authors develop, with tens of different specialists and reviewers contributing their know-how to the author's hard work, is for most potential readers idly sitting, locked behind a paywall. Yes, we sell our books in digital form allowing you to get one on your machine in minutes, but book content is still only accessible if it is bought. Otherwise it's hidden behind a firm and inflexible paywall. You either buy the book and have it, or don't buy it and don't have it. (Unless you are a pirate.) Since people cannot buy all the content they might be interested in, the effect is to separate potential readers from our books.

Why Mitoc Group?

Automation Infrastructure
It was a revelation when we learned about serverless technology. Mitoc Group, an AWS Advanced Technology Partner and featured AWS Lambda Partner, is one of pioneers and early adopters of serverless architecture on AWS. The opportunities for speeding up the development and the reuse of existing services was heartening. Additionally, the low cost of operation with the ease of scaling up the number of users was immensely appealing for our small company
Automation Infrastructure

The Benefits

The Benefits
AWS Serverless provides an incredibly rich suite of next generation cloud native services. Mitoc Group made it easier and quicker to build and release software, as well as manage services and associated resources. We increased development agility and reduced product's time to market. Engaging continuous integration and continuous deployment processes allowed us to remain a small team with a tiny budget.