Nonprofit Uses Sun SPARC Servers to Deliver Optimum Performance for Mission-Critical Systems
Based in Alexandria, Virginia, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) was established by Congress in 1984. It is a private, nonprofit organization that works in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Justice. With offices in six states, the 300-person organization works with law enforcement, schools, parents, and communities nationwide to help find missing children and prevent child abduction, child sexual abuse, and child pornography.
Customer Challenges
Solution
To deliver the highest levels of performance and ensure system reliability and security, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) continually upgrades its legacy systems with Sun SPARC servers and SunSpectrum Support services. The Sun solution helps NCMEC keep pace with its growing volume of Web traffic without the need to increase its administrative staff.
Business Results
Story Details
Since 1984, NCMEC has assisted law enforcement in the recovery of more than 132,300 missing children and has handled more than 646,600 reports of child sexual exploitation. NCMEC is the nation's leading resource on the issues of missing and exploited children. Technological advances have helped NCMEC increase its recovery rate of missing children from 66% in 1989 to 96% in 2009.
Since it was founded, NCMEC has operated its most critical systems exclusively on Sun Microsystems hardware and software. In addition to its internal case management system, NCMEC runs Missingkids.comwhere individuals can get information about missing children. People also can report sightings to the 24-hour call center by phone via a toll-free number (1-800-THE-LOST) or directly over the Internet. Sun designed Missingkids.com and provided a substantial amount of hardware and software to power the site, along with training and support.
" When we were faced with the enormous task of helping to reunite missing children with their families in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, we needed to be able to accommodate over 20 million site visits on any given day. Because Sun has taken time to understand our IT needs and recognizes the value of our mission, they provided us with a high-end server to help manage the increased site traffic and ultimately reunite 5,192 children with their families. "
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— Peg Flick, Chief Information Officer, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
Sun Professional Services consultants designed the CyberTipline as a three-tier application based on the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE). This design provides high system availability and makes it possible for many users to concurrently submit leads. The Web reporting tier runs Sun Java System Web Server on a variety of Sun servers. The middle business logic tier uses JavaBeans architecture to validate identity and authorize user access levels. It then sends JavaServer Pages (JSP) pages back to the user. Java DataBase Connectivity (JDBC) technology connects the middle tier to the Ingres II database at the third tier. "The Sun consultants were exactly what we needed - experienced professionals who came in and evaluated what we were trying to accomplish," says Peg Flick, chief information officer at NCMEC. "They used their Java technology expertise and leadership to design a robust, scalable, and secure architecture that fits our unique needs." The volume of incoming reports to the CyberTipline jumped dramatically following 1999 legislation requiring Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to report child pornography incidents to NCMEC. To handle the growing demand, NCMEC added CyberTipline II in 2000 and has continued to upgrade its servers, many of which were nearing end-of-life. Sun executives at the Executive Briefing Center helped NCMEC plan for a consolidated IT environment that would increase system performance and throughput, save space, reduce operating and maintenance costs, and provide greater network security. The organization, which originally operated on about a dozen servers, now manages nearly 60 servers, including the Sun Fire T2000 servers with CoolThreads technology and Sun Fire V890 servers, all running the Solaris 10 Operating System. "Our biggest challenges are the need for lots of storage and for high-performance systems. Our goal is always to improve throughput so we can process data and get it to law enforcement as quickly as possible," says Flick. "We chose Sun SPARC servers because we're always looking for faster performance. And for storage, the Sun Fire X4500 server will be part of our next purchase." Although the performance of the new servers has not been benchmarked, Flick says NCMEC analysts are definitely able to process more reports than they could in years past. This is due in part to the speed of the Sun SPARC-based servers and also to improvements that Sun consultants made to the CyberTipline application, automating many steps that the analysts previously did manually. "In that sense, productivity has increased, but so has the workload," says Flick. Due to the typical budget limitations of a nonprofit organization, NCMEC's IT administrative staff has not grown in proportion to the increased volume of work. "We stick with Sun because of performance, but also because the hardware and software are so reliable that we can still maintain nearly 60 servers with just two people," says Flick. "And you can't beat the relationship we have with Sun; they've always supported us over the years." |
Public/Pivate Sector Partnership Helps Bring Missing Children Home
As the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) has grown, the demands on its technology infrastructure have increased dramatically. The advent of the Web, for instance, provides an unprecedented opportunity to quickly share information about missing kids around the world, but it also places significant new demands on NCMEC's personnel and resources.
Fortunately, thanks to support and contributions from Sun Microsystems, NCMEC is able to do its job better than ever. Over the last six years, Sun has helped build and enhance NCMEC's technology infrastructure by donating the hardware and software that helps the operation run smoothly. More importantly, Sun offers personal assistance and passion to champion NCMEC's cause. According to Rick Minicucci, NCMEC's chief technology officer, the relationship between Sun and NCMEC is "a partnership, not a situation of a charity and donor. Sun has helped us to solve our problems with solutions that make sense. They have given at every turn."
"Sun is proud to help provide NCMEC the technology infrastructure to power their search for missing children and aid law enforcement efforts in recovering them."
Thomas Kreidler
Sun Microsystems' Public Sector Area
Getting Involved
Sun's involvement with NCMEC began in 1994 after Chaz Chastain, global business development manager of Criminal Justice Operations with Sun Federal, heard about NCMEC from two other Sun government customers.
Soon after Chastain's initial visit to NCMEC, it was clear Sun would help NCMEC build its technology infrastructure, and would do so in a non-revenue-generating capacity. According to Minicucci, when Sun approached NCMEC, NCMEC had a few 486-based computers and an assortment of unlinked databases. There was no Web site. Six years later, a collection of Sun Enterprise[tm] servers and other Sun products power a site that receives up to 3 million hits per day.
In addition to hardware and software, Sun Support Services has provided maintenance time and Sun Educational Services has generously given course instruction.
In the early days of Sun's involvement, the personal contributions of Sun employees were probably more important than the donations of technology and support. For example, Matt Hatley, a systems engineer at Sun, delivered one of NCMEC's first Sun servers himself, loading it in the back of his jeep and driving it from Washington, D.C. to NCMEC's Web host in Long Island, NY. Around NCMEC, Chastain and Hatley are still considered heroes.
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children On The Web
NCMEC was co-founded in 1984 by John Walsh, whose six-year-old son Adam had been murdered in a case that gained international attention. NCMEC is a unique public/private partnership. It is funded by the U.S. Congress, with a line item in the federal budget, but operates as a non-profit instead of a government agency.
NCMEC's goal--preventing the victimization of kids--is little changed since 1984, but the means it uses to accomplish that mission have evolved dramatically over the years. Posters, age-progression sketches, mailers, and milk cartons have given way to technology-based initiatives that increase the speed, size, and reach of NCMEC's efforts. None of the programs would be possible in its current form without the contributions of Sun personnel and technology.
NCMEC's MissingKids.com site handles nearly 3 million hits a day with the help of Sun hardware and software. The site's centerpiece is a photo listings database, which contains on average over 2,000 photos and descriptions of missing kids. Case workers and law-enforcement agencies can search the database by name, physical description, time and place last seen, and so on. Authorized agencies can also add and update content in the database as they gather new case information.
Over 60 percent of the site traffic is broadcasts of photo listings to Java[tm] applets that over 40,000 volunteers, welfare agencies, and law enforcement organizations have posted throughout the Web. The Java applet includes pointers to NCMEC's database, which serves pictures of kids featured in the 12 most pressing cases. According to NCMEC, every day that a child is missing decreases the chance of a safe recovery. Distributing a child's photo quickly and to a wide geographic area can mean the difference between a fast recovery and a long search. Java allows NCMEC to push the images to the public without having to wait for the public to come to them.
The efforts of NCMEC extend beyond the boundaries of the United States. The International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children (ICMEC) was formed in 1999 and is modeled after the NCMEC. ICMEC provides a coordinated response to the problem of missing and exploited children in 18 countries around the world. It is the only international resource of its kind. As a corporate sponsor, Sun regularly donates Sun Enterprise 450 systems to branches in need.
CyberTipline Gets Results
NCMEC also hosts the CyberTipline, a forms-based Web application anyone can use to report suspected child exploitation, such as pornography, enticement, and molestation. Analysts with NCMEC's Exploited Child Unit (ECU) review incoming reports and provide information to the FBI, the U.S. Customs Service, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and local law enforcement as appropriate. Since its launch nearly three years ago, the CyberTipline has taken over 32,000 reports, many of which have resulted in arrests.
Sun has been involved with the CyberTipline since its launch in 1998. Again, this involvement included not only technical assistance, but the personal involvement of John Marselle, now Sun's vice president of the Americas, who was instrumental in helping promote the CyberTipline when it first started.
The CyberTipline has been such a success that NCMEC and Sun are developing a new, more sophisticated version. When launched, CyberTipline II will make it easier for the public and ISPs to submit tips, as well as help the ECU analysts search and analyze them.
Sun's invaluable contributions of time and personal effort have remained steady over the years. Given the nature of NCMEC's mission, it's not surprising that a personal link between Sun and NCMEC is a constant in the partnership.
"Sun is proud to help provide NCMEC the technology infrastructure to power their search for missing children and aid law enforcement efforts in recovering them," said Thomas Kreidler, vice president of Sun Microsystems' Public Sector Area. "Our initiation and ongoing partnership demonstrates our commitment to leveraging the Internet to expedite the process of reuniting families."
Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Sun Enterprise, SunScreen, Sun StorEdge, iPlanet, Java, J2EE and JDBC are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries.
All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc.
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