Afrozaar's Mobile Backend as a Service (MBaaS) Baobab Suite is the first of its kind for the publishing industry. Baobab Suite has been built on solid technologies and is readily scalable to meet the publishing and content distribution needs of the worlds leading newspaper publishing houses. www.baobabsuite.com

1. Baobab Suite
Content redistribution platform and
app development framework for
Newspaper Publishers.
brought to you by
www.afrozaar.com

2. Baobab Suite 360°
• The Team
• The Problems
• Baobab Suite overview
• How we help
• What we offer

3. Baobab Suite Team
• Afrozaar.com is the software and consulting firm behind the Baobab
Suite product
• Team structure of 20 designers, analysts, developers, testers, delivery
managers
• Average of more than 10 years experience per team member
• Specialists in Java cloud solutions, Apple iOS, Android, Windows 8
“native” and HTML5 app development.
• Experienced digital publishing solution delivery across all major app
platforms for the past 3 years
(currently as of December 2012)

4. Executive Team
Dirk le Roux Rich Cheary Marco Theart
Managing Director Marketing and Sales Technical Director
dirk.leroux@afrozaar.com Director marco.theart@afrozaar.com
richard.cheary@afrozaar.com

5. The Problems
• Print revenues will continue to decrease
• Unable to predict what the future of curated content looks like
• Enabling rapid innovation with a secure, stable and scalable system
• Need to respond to readers and find a new path to increasing
revenues
• Expense and complexity of distributing media content securely to
millions of users on different mobile devices
• Unable to respond quickly to change and experiment cost
effectively

6. Baobab Suite overview
• Baobab Suite is a Mobile Backend as a Service (MBaaS) for publishers
– “MBaaS is a model for providing web and mobile app developers with a way to link
their applications to backend cloud storage” - Wikipedia
• Solves the solution architecture challenges of having multiple sources
of content, needing to be secured and distributed to many people
using lots of different devices and platforms.
• Baobab Suite is the result of technical and mobile publishing lessons
learned and applied by Afrozaar and one of London’s most traditional
and profitable newspaper media groups
• Baobab Suite is built on Java Enterprise standards and can either be
hosted in a public cloud or in a private data center

7. Baobab Suite overview

8. Baobab Suite provides
• Freedom of choice of app development partner
• Automated aggregation of multiple content sources
• Ability to make downloaded content changes retrospectively across
native app platforms at runtime
• Ability to change native app layouts at runtime
• Previewing of unpublished content on actual production apps
directly from the store
• Integration with existing CMS, subscription, billing & advert systems
• Communication to users via push notifications
• Quick tactical go-to-market app strategy with no lock-in
• Flexibility around pay-walling and metering of content at a granular
level, per platform, device and within geographic regions

9. Baobab Suite overview
www.baobabsuite.com/overview has detail descriptions

10. Anytime, anywhere on any device

11. How we help
• Consistent single source of content
• Ability to experiment
$ • Monetization
• Vendor freedom
• We solve some tricky Technology problems

12. How we help
• Consistent single source of content
– Single server serving content to all mediums
– No chance that content is out of sync on different devices
– Track usage across mediums (metering)
• Ability to experiment
– Across multiple digital mediums
– Metering
– Payment gateways
– Tactical go-to-market (White label app prior to custom differentiating app)
• Monetization
– Payment gateways
– Ads integration
– Metering
– Sponsorship $

13. How we help
• Vendor freedom
– No medium lock-in
– No app vendor lock-in
• We solve some tricky Technology problems
– Content sourcing
– Content versioning
– App versioning
– Protocol versioning
– Subscription management & integration
– Caching & edge routing

14. What we offer
• CORE Server
• SDK
• Apps
• Templates
• Metering

15. What we offer
• CORE Server
– Content Ingestors
– Transformers
– Exporters
– Push notification
– Entitlement
• Software Development Kits (SDKs)
– Platforms (e.g. iOS, Android, Win 8, Social, Web, System to System)
– No app vendor lock-in
– Common standards and services used
– Best practice implementations on all platforms
– Security
– Platform Services (e.g. store integrations, push notifications, on-device storage and security)

16. What we offer
• Apps
– White label ready
– Native mobile apps
– Customizable (e.g. 3rd party integration)
– Template driven
– No lock-in
• Templates
– Layouts can change at runtime
– Custom views if needed
– Possibilities to differentiate

17. What we offer
• Metering
– As granular as needed
– Changes done at runtime
– Decision referred to server
– Decision base
• Cross platform count
• Geo-location
• Device type / model
• Section based
• Sponsorship
– Can be tracked across platforms
– Pay-walls

18. The Implementation Process
• Aim is to keep it simple
• Afrozaar team to perform a Baobab Initial Assessment (BIA)
– Assess content sources for import
– Assess current app landscape
– Discuss short term vs. long-term strategy
– Define an implementation project plan
• Setup and configure
– Baobab CORE Server (MBaaS in cloud or private data center)
– Content imports
– White label or custom apps
• Operational pilot run
– Training and end to end run through (import, preview, publish)
• Post implementation
– Determine the support and service levels

19. The Process

20. “We look forward to building mutually beneficial
relationships with innovative publishing houses that
could benefit from Baobab Suite.”
Contact: Richard Cheary
richard.cheary@afrozaar.com
www.baobabsuite.com
@afrozaar