Windows Applications

Does the enterprise need to migrate from Windows 7 to Windows 10 or from Windows 8 or Windows XP for that matter? It is our opinion that upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10 will definitely be a positive experience for the consumer in many regards; but what about your enterprise?

The fact and the matter is, from both a marketing and technology perspective, it seems like enterprises will also benefit of migrating from Windows 7 to Windows 10 although it might have immediate repercussions on which Microsoft, apparently, has thought about!

There will be a migration cost in terms of adaptation efforts for the personnel, but also in terms of applications and systems migration and, in terms of application development process changes, which we shall explore more deeply in the next post.

Let us remind that the Windows 8 misfire (and its « metro » display which was meant to be the first serious trial at a standard multiplatform display), combined with the lack of Microsoft Smartphones and BYOD, opened the door to both Apple and Google to bring along massive volume of mobile devices among enterprises. Hence, one might question the true penetration potential of Microsoft mobile devices running on Windows 10?

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That’s right, Analystik celebrates its birthday today, that’s 30 years old… not bad, hey?

And still today, Analystik is perfectly aligned with its original mission, that is Custom Software Development but God knows how different we now go about it, in the execution…

When first starting we went from developing self-sustained and task-oriented Dos and Windows applications to Software Suites automating most or all critical business process of organizations to land today into Web and Mobile Web solutions communicating information in real time with systems within organizations.

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Of course there were horror stories with the cost of custom software development before the New Millennium, and there will be others. But since the New Millennium though, the crown of horror stories often goes to Commercial Softwares under license like Oracle, Microsoft, SAP, etc., to which many large corporations and Governments have given humongous mandates (often outrageous purchase orders).

Evidently, the vast majority of commercial softwares’ exaggerated costs and deadline overruns come from integration and personalization; services normally de facto included within the cost of custom software development mandates but which we don’t always measure accurately the impact when buying a commercial software… since everybody else has purchased it, right!

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The New Millennium has witnessed the splendid triumph of « best practices » and « quality control » concepts, in almost all fields of activities. And most of all, best pratices and quality control have come to define the true nature of Custom Software Development in particular and IT in general, Communications and Information Technologies, which have accelerated their broadcasting.

2000 à 2010 – reminder

• Web democratization, as well as Web design and programming jobs
• Communications, Sharing & Implementation of Best Practices
• Democratization of « best practices » concept in custom software development

Who defines the concept of best practices, broadcast it and why?

Expert firms such as Gartner, Forrester, KPMG, Deloitte, etc., that counsel large corporations and assess the evolution of standards within different industries to take their pulse, which is quite useful for investors and shareholders as well as for managers. It helps decision-makers to weigh their enterprise against their industries and to get to know the necessary means to keep the pace with the competition.

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Visual Studio is one of the most popular software to create application or website in .Net environment. This software supports Sass and Less but it doesn’t compile those two languages making them complicated and useless.

In the new version (Visual Studio 2015), Intellisense has not been fixed and still has difficulties to make links between Sass and Less file types.

Even so, the new version of Visual Studio offers some new features that help us with these problems.

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Gulp plugin is a task runner. For example, you can easily: transform your Sass (or Less) files in css files, minify them, using autoprefixer, join them in 1 files, check your JavaScript files with jsLint and much more. If you code a little bit it can be really useful. It is one of my favourite tools for my web site development and it is totally free. It might be a little frightening at the beginning but with some practice and courage, it is easier than it looks.

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Managing growth while successfully controlling your expenses, retaining your critical resources and facing competition; and simultaneously increasing profit margin, of course, to please shareholders!  Well, it’s not an easy business to be a manager these days. And very few can boast being a visionary one!

One of the key factors of success is certainly productivity, or  the ability to  increase productivity!  And this, nowadays more than ever, goes through technology.

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When Analystik starts a new mandate with a client; the main goal is almost always to automate a business process and the methodology is, all things considered, quite simple:

• Analysis of the process
• Analysis of possible enhancements to the process itself
• Creation of the software solution automating the process
• Integration to existing related technologies and processes
• Implementation

One spontaneously sees that a tailor-made software solution will fit more like a « glove » for the enterprise compared to a commercial software which is more of a « mitt ».

Shall we point it out over and over; although it calls upon a superior initial investment compared to a commercial software which answers roughly from 50% to 75% of requirements; a tailor-made software solution will always respond to 100% of requirements.  And let’s not forget, while adaptation to existing technologies and processes is always included with tailor-made software solution; it is always necessary as well with commercial software solution but never included !!!  We’re talking extras here; sounds like a story you’ve heard recently?

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Last week, we were discussing The Eternal IT Dilemma; tailor-made software development or commercial software solution?  How about this dilemma from a Mobility perspective; how does it go about Smartphones and Tablets? Does enterprises go for a Tailor-made mobile Application?

The vast majority of enterprises that put into play a Sales Force are thinking about integrating Mobility to their IT development or among the needed IT solutions.  The laptop seems to be getting slower and slower to get started and not always easily « networked »; which can be accounted for the fact that more and more representatives leave them at the office and fall back to their Smartphones, even to get strategic information much needed for outdoors client activities.

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It’s the burden of all enterprises at one point or another; we often meet with business prospects which have very precise business needs and requirements, and that are confronted with multiple options as much in terms of technology as finance, and this story unfolds itself on a landscape of functionalities and satisfaction.  Let’s put things out just the way they are: contrary tocommercial software product, custom-made development frightens a lot of people, because commercial software product is concrete to start with which is both more appealing and securing for a decision-maker.  But when you take a closer look at it, you’ll see that reality is not that simple.

We will try in this post, and as much as we can, to identify the pros and cons of both IT options: custom-made software development or commercial software product.

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The debate has been raging for over a decade and the heights the confrontation and rivalries at the turn of the Millennium. So, what is it, Web or Windows? At the time, these two diametrically opposed visions each had hard core advocates who had sworn allegiance to the death. Much water has passed under the bridge since then and today we understand that reality is not quite so simple; not everything is black or white.

The vast majority of businesses have purchased numerous office software programme licenses from Microsoft (Windows, Office, SharePoint, etc). Since the arrival of Windows and a great many of these have invested in the development of applications custom built in Microsoft’s .Net framework. And today, almost all IT managers are turning to the Web where they are seriously considering or at the very least evaluating their options there.

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hAs we mentioned in our previous post, it’s clear that, mostly for economic reasons, companies want applications that are “ready-to-mobilize”. The demand is there: 75% use standard applications and 20%, custom business applications. Further, we continued on to show that developers see positive opportunities for both options. Off-the-shelf as well as custom-made business applications…

One in the hand, is better than two in the bush

Recently however, a senior mobile developer confided to me that he had seriously considered dropping some mobile development platforms. Because customers were just not ready to absorb the costs of cross-platform development. Instead, in order to save money these clients were asking him to select THE platform (or sometimes two) with the greatest reach and potential, to evaluate the costs for it and to eliminate the others! While this is understandable, it’s not necessarily an elegant solution and very often proves problematic because there are few companies or homogeneous target audiences that use only one model of mobile device, let alone a single OS.

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The debate has been raging for over a decade and the heights the confrontation and rivalries. So, what is it, Web applications or Windows? At the time, these two diametrically opposed visions each had hard core advocates who had sworn allegiance to the death. Much water has passed under the bridge since then and today we understand that reality is not quite so simple; not everything is black or white.

The vast majority of businesses – be they big, medium or even small – have purchased numerous office software programme licenses from Microsoft (Windows, Office, SharePoint, etc.) since the arrival of Windows and a great many of these have invested in the development of applications custom built in Microsoft’s .Net framework or other platforms. And today, almost all IT managers are turning to the Web applications where they are seriously considering or at the very least evaluating their options there.

Walking the Web applications / Windows high wire with my business

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The time has come to migrate the technology  and your IT Management Director swears by the Web. He o wants all new applications (or almost all…) to be Web-based. The main argument being made is that all these web applications will be much easier to deploy and maintain. That there will be huge savings in fees. Should you make the web migration move.

Oh Web!  Oh how we adore you!

Some of your current applications actually contain a lot of business intelligence. Your users have gotten used to the way they’ve accessed it over the years.  Will a web migration allow you to preserve the integrity of your business intelligence and maintain the current level of usability?

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This is the third opus of a series of posts and comments published by « Enterprise Mobility Matters » which will be the subject of a “parallel blogging” experiment with Analystik, editor of the « Productivité + » blog, onto which you will find a reply to these posts and comments.

Why Develop a Customized Mobility Application?

We have ended our third post with this conclusion: “Now, can a Smartphone contribute to optimizing those processes critical to mobile workers productivity?  A true leader will immediately proceed by analyzing its critical business processes and assessing their optimization potential with Smartphones. He will have in no time put into place metrics to ensure the productivity gains are at the rendezvous!!!”

And while analyzing your critical processes, a question may erupt at the top of your mind. Shall I develop a customized mobile application?

The question is quite simple and the answer is as simple, since the « required-to-be- mobilized » function is not available within the mobile applications park, you will most probably be facing one of three situations calling upon a customized mobile application:

• The business function to be mobilized is in fact part of a custom-made application

Ex: ERP which was custom-made for your enterprise can be mobilized. It will be available to any smartphone compatible with some restriction.

• An activity executed on the road can now be automated, thanks to Smartphones capabilities

Ex: technicians are now using BlackBerry’s instead of paper forms.

• New-generation Smartphones increased capabilities let us anticipate some internal business functions to be mobilized.

Ex: An enterprise CRM advanced functionalities such as access to strategic data mobilized.

The smartphone power helps to get mobilized application

Let’s mention, to make our point, that today’s Smartphones technical specs (BlackBerry Storm, iPhone, Treo Pro) are quite impressive for such little devices:

• processors from 400 to 600 MHz
• screens up to 480×360 pixels
• memory cards up to 32 Go
• 3.2 megapixels cameras.

Let’s not forget that at the turn of the Millennium, a lot of people were working with desktops just barely faster. Hard disks were not at 1 Go yet and desktop digital cameras were still quite exotic!

From the moment your business operation specifics require the development of a customized mobile application, you will have but only two choices:

• Smartphone embarked application
• Web application calling upon your Smartphone Internet capabilities

Which is which, how to choose between developing an « embarked » versus a « Web » mobile app?  What follows is more of an analysis guide than a comprehensive list of evaluation criteria.

5 development steps

1^st step

• The first point to assess the “criticality” level of the application to be mobilized.  Must this application run at all time and at all cost, in an uninterrupted fashion in order to ensure the enterprise or the workers productivity?  If so, then without any doubt you must develop a Web app onto which your Smartphones will hook themselves.

2^nd step

• Secondly, security is a serious matter to take into account.  Can you keep embarked data, or transferred data or data captured on the road on the device without any risk for either the enterprise or its clients’ security?  If not, then a Web app is your best solution again.

3^rd step

• The nature of the application to be mobilized is also not to be neglected. Is this application processing much more data than it is providing?  For example, verifying the quantity of a specific item in inventory demands a lot of processing but delivers only one data; thus, the processing is done with data only available from the inside of the enterprise to which your Smartphone doesn’t have access, then…

4^th step

• Another important criteria to consider is the geographical environment of the mobile workers, do they always have good network connectivity?   If not, then you should capitalize on your Smartphone.

5^th step

• Finally, the nature of your operations or of the job on the road can tell you how to go about things.  For example, if your operations call upon functions such as taking a picture, a vocal note, downloading and/or reading a file, etc.?  Then, it’s a no brainer.

In any case, more than anything, your top motivation for developing a customized mobile application is the existence of a potential gain and the final justification should be the confirmation of the expected gain.  If there is an opportunity to do better or more or do the same but with less resource with the help of a Smartphone, then you shouldn’t hesitate!!!   The logic is quite simple, how or when will the development cost be compensated by the expected gains; in short, what is the ROI?

Denis Paul van Chestein – Michel Martel