I recently had the opportunity to interview Eyal Pfeifel, Magic Software's CTO and ask him his opinion on a number of technology trends that the company is currently working on including Rich Internet Applications (RIA), mobile enterprise application development and the whole Cloud computing phenomena.
Below is the full transcript of our interview:
SG: Our platforms are known for their use of ‘business-ready’ logic rather than hard coding. Can you elaborate?
EP: When we designed uniPaaS, our main goal was to streamline and simplify the process of developing business applications. Whenever we consider adopting or developing new capabilities, we always put a very strong emphasis on ease of use and not necessarily on an exhaustive set of capabilities. At the end of the day, the developer enjoys a more productive work process as a result of this focus.
SG: Define the main advantages of Rich Internet Applications (RIA)?
EP: For years, IT departments and ISV’s have been looking for technologies that don’t require on-going maintenance, yet are still powerful and interactive. The main success behind the browser was its ability to deploy applications to any desktop without requiring any installation and maintenance. However, browser applications are very complicated to develop if you want to achieve a high level of interactivity. This is where RIA fills the gap by providing a highly interactive rich user interface while not requiring any installation or administration.
SG: What are some of the challenges in effectively building a mobile enterprise application?
EP: The main challenge facing developers today is the lack of business-oriented, portable mobile development platforms. Each mobile platform today requires completely different development tools and skill-sets and the developer is required to either choose between them or learn them all. These existing development environments are also comparable to the first generation of desktop development platforms from a decade ago in terms of functionality and simplicity.
SG: So how do we get around these difficulties today?
EP: Using our uniPaaS platform it’s possible to develop both desktop and mobile applications using a single development environment and a single paradigm. The same skill-set the developer uses to build desktop applications can now also be used to build mobile applications. uniPaaS’ support for additional mobile platforms is only going to expand in the near future.
SG: Where do you see the mobile market moving to next?
EP: In the coming years we will see more and more functionality moving from the office to the mobile phone just as we moved from office phone extensions to private phone numbers, and from desktop based e-mail to mobile e-mail. We will now also see additional enterprise abilities migrating from the desktop to mobile handsets, where applicable.
Some capabilities may of course stay on the desktop – but functions which require individual interaction and response will move – such as task management, workflow, simple reporting and so on.
SG: So, do you see all IT apps moving to the Cloud in the next few years?
EP: I think that the cloud is a very important platform and I believe that many enterprise solutions will migrate to cloud-based environments in the coming years. However, in order for this trend to succeed it remains vital to provide viable on-premise options for both IT departments and ISV’s in order to avoid technology lock-in concerns. Any vendor seeking success in the Cloud space would be wise to provide on-premise capabilities as well.
SG: Eyal, thank you very much for your time.
EP: A pleasure.
Michael McMillin is the president of a 5-person software company with over 1,200 customers. They've been using uniPaaS for over 20 years to build specialist construction software.
Thanks to uniPaaS RIA they can now quickly and cost-efficiently transform their client/server application into a Rich Internet Application that serves up the power of a desktop application over the internet.
The advantage? Their customers - construction site engineers, no longer have to worry about carrying an expensive application-loaded notebook onto building sites - all they need is a simple web-enabled device from which they access their application online using Internet Explorer, Firefox or whatever browser they use. So even if their desktop/mobile device is damaged or stolen, they only loose the hardware - and not the more valuable application IP.
A perfect case study example of the uses of RIA and private Cloud applications.
The IT Spending Spiral
The UK's new Lib/Con government has unveiled plans to cut £3.2 billion over the next five years from its current levels of IT spending which total around £16 billion. Meanwhile that figure is dwarfed by the U.S. federal government which currently spends around $76 billion a year on information technology, with $20 billion of that devoted to hardware, software, and file servers (Alford and Morton, 2009).
With IT public sector spending spiraling out of control, governments on both sides of the Atlantic are finally beginning to reconcile that you cannot dig your way deeper into dept in order to climb out of the fiscal hole we find ourselves in. Governments are left with little choice - either put a brake on spending today (and then perhaps at least have a say in what you decide to cut), or face a certain downgrade in credit rating that will be a much harder blow to the economy tomorrow.
The Dept Abyss
Of course, either choice is a bitter pill to swallow - but it is necessary. I believe that those in the know, in the civil services, federal governments and finance sector, have for a long time watched the figures mounting up in near disbelief, and they fully understand that no county can ignore for long the sort of deficit growth that we are currently experiencing (In the UK it's currently at 3 billion per week while the US debt increased by a total of 1.9 trillion in a single year for 2009).
Western governments have already had a glimpse of what lurks over the Greek abyss and are now in a cold sweat. And while the UK and US are not dependent like Greece, on the Euro printing presses controlled by Brussels, in some ways that actually makes things worse.
It means that an irresponsible government can borrow and spend well beyond its means, and then fallaciously rely on their ability to print money to pay off their debt if and when the marker is eventually called in. The problem is that printing money in the numbers required (around £890 billion for the total UK dept and $13 trillion for the US) inevitably results in inflation. As in the words of Milton Friedman, "inflation is taxation without legislation". The old, the very young, the middle class and small businesses that represent the backbone of western free-market economies will suffer the most as their purchasing power and savings rapidly evaporate.
Not a Sight to Reassure Nervous Credit Agencies - UK National debt: ONS
So the UK government is right to start now, while they still can. And there's no more appropriate place than the public sector - where there is a history of over-spending and bad decision-making that has seen costs spiral.
The landscape of government IT projects is littered with high-profile failures. The recent plans to create a single UK database of prisoner records is just the latest and is now weighing in at over a whopping £500 million in costs and probably won't end there.
If the US federal government figures we mentioned at the start are anything to go by, then we can say that roughly one quarter of total government IT costs are taken up by hardware/software/file servers. If true, then we can begin to appreciate the role that cloud computing can play in alleviating at least part of our budget crisis.
Cloud Computing - The Cost Saving Potential
By its very definition, cloud computing frees organizations from the costs of acquiring and maintaining IT systems, enabling them to more efficiently ‘consume' IT resources on a ‘just in time' basis instead. The cloud frees staff from the limitations of the desktop and even has the potential to increase enterprise productivity with the use of mobile-hosted applications that let staff work effectively outside of the office.
Cloud computing then, represents the ultimate playing field leveller - small and medium sized businesses can subscribe to scalable and powerful CRM, ERP or other computing resources and begin to compete with their larger rivals. And what's good for the free market is often an indication of what's good for the public sector - whether it's defense, healthcare or education. Cloud computing has the potential to put an end to the project cost overruns and provide a proactive response to the impending IT budget cuts.
The ISV Challenge - How to Compete with the Big Boys
For independent software vendors, the cloud story is panning out a little differently. The cloud industry is being quickly dominated by the big-boy vendors such as Microsoft, IBM, Google and Amazon who are using their clout to rapidly corner the cloud provision market.
The catch for the little guys is that's it's not that easy to efficiently implement a cloud offering. To build a cloud application for business use - especially if it's designed to run on mobile devices, isn't a simple undertaking. A cloud development effort begins with a Rich Internet Application (RIA) - a technology that to some extent remains below the media radar - but nevertheless represents the power at the very heart of the cloud revolution.
RIA is the ability to host powerful desktop computing over the internet. It works by finely balancing and distributing computing capabilities between the server and the client - and it relies on a clever communication structure which allows the client to call on the server when more complex tasks are demanded.
Software vendors looking to build a cloud application ignore the complexities of RIA at their peril.
To help, here are four tips that may come in handy for ISV's looking to build and deploy a cloud offering in the near future:
- Research what it really takes to build a Cloud application - don't be fooled into thinking that it's all about a cool-looking client interface. Like an iceberg, most of the RIA development effort is below the surface - with the server and communication layers. So fancy client-side tools such as Microsoft Silverlight or Adobe Air/Flex in reality are only part of the RIA effort.
-
Mobile enterprise applications require more thinking out. For a cloud application to run on a mobile device, software vendors need to consider not just the smaller screen factor but also the fact that users will typically avoid complex tasks that can be more easily handled from the office desktop. Mobile applications therefore need to be imaginatively thought out and adequately prototyped to ensure simplicity of use and the ‘completion of tasks' rather than the straightforward one-to-one replication of back-office systems.
-
Use an application platform rather than coding to standardize on skill-sets. As already mentioned, cloud applications based on RIA require the use of different teams and different programming languages to build the different server and client sides of the application. Using a dedicated RIA application platform that provides a single toolset for these tasks can save software designers valuable time and money and help ISV's get their product to market before the big vendors succeed in saturating the field.
-
Don't forget about integration! Even once you've built a great cloud application - your customers are going to need to integrate their cloud data with their existing on-premise applications and back-office systems. Integration inherently improves the ROI of cloud data, so it's worthwhile offering some sort of integration capability. Using a proven integration platform with ready-made connectors to common enterprise systems such as Salesforce.com and SAP is a step in the right direction and will facilitate a fast and cost-effective integration that will appeal to many customers - especially those put off by the thought of another long, manually-coded project.
Japanese software developers aren't wasting time. They are busy building rich internet applications and getting projects through the door.
Here at Magic Software we currently know of over 100 Japanese companies in the process of developing or delivering Rich Internet Applications using our uniPaaS application platform.
Asama Software is one. They've just used Magic Software's uniPaaS RIA to build a rich internet insurance application called 'NEWS'.
What's nice about this story is that the company was using an older version of Magic Software's application platform for Client-Server apps, and was planning to use HTML to add-on the Rich Client Interface that their customer was asking for.
The only catch was that they had 3 months to deliver the complete application - tried and tested. Woops, I almost forgot - and they only had a single developer.
Understandably, the company was a bit worried about the prospects of re-writing tons of HTML for every new small change to the business logic. It's a rare vendor that never has to make sudden or last minute tweaks to their application because of forgotten, misunderstood or changed customer demands or some other type of scope creep.
Luckily, Asama Software quickly found out that uniPaaS RIA was available (it had just come out at the time), and they upgraded. uniPaaS RIA has the ability to automatically apply newly written business logic to the appropriate rich client interface as well as server side without the need for manual intervention.
Any changes to the business logic are automatically adjusted in the rich client with the ease of a simple refresh action.
And the results speak for themselves. Asama Software's single developer was able to meet the tight deadline, deliver a very cool RIA (the Japanese script just adds to that ultra-function feel!) - And all without a single line of HTML or any other programming language.
Here are a couple of screen-shots from the finished application - granted these don't have the polish of an HTML masterpiece - but then again, not every company can afford to wait that long or spend that much while waiting. This application works exactly as the customer demands, with no hiccups and no bugs and it was delivered on-time and on-budget. Who could ask for more?
These shots are customer contract fields in the NEWS system that insurance agents can enter via the web and adjust/update in real-time from work, home or from mobile devices on the move.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. There are similar Japanese software companies building RIA-style business applications all over Japan, thanks to uniPaaS.
Looks like Microsoft is betting everything they have on the Cloud these days. Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO gave a talk last week at the University of Washington, parts of which you can view below.
Stripped of Microsoft's self-promotion, this was an excellent talk that once again highlights the benefits of the Cloud model, particularly for the enterprise.
In today's business environment where time to market is everything and cost-efficiency is even more, Cloud computing allows any size business to build new offerings and capture new market share without the need for a large up-front investment in IT systems and infrastructure.
Ballmer also speaks about the influence of the Cloud on the mobile market. From Magic Software's perspective, the advent of the Cloud and in particular Rich Internet Applications (RIA), has been a major technological breakthrough that's now driving the uptake of the mobile enterprise market. Mobile handsets can now display a myriad of rich information compiled from a range of heavy back-end systems (this requires a combination of a RIA application development platform with a data integration platform).
This capability to host powerful and rich enterprise resources despite the limited size of mobile devices is rapidly making the desktop PC redundant and is enabling a small revolution in field services - particularly sales and industries such as manufacturing, fleet management, logistics and distribution.
Ballmer also spoke about Microsoft's new Azure platform, which I'm a little sceptical about. I'm sticking to my guns on this one in believing that while nice, the Azure platform will not be a game changer, not overnight anyhow. Businesses will continue to host their applications on their own servers for many years to come. No CEO or CFO is going to sign away a company's exisiting IT infrastructure to Microsoft's Cloud if their on-premise systems continue to perform well and support existing business.
However, there can be no denying the force of the Cloud for providing a cost-efficient means of developing your market presence. Companies are going to need a means of keeping their on-premise systems current will also providing a Public or Private Cloud application version.
For that they will be needing a platform such as uniPaaS, which to date, is the only application development platform that can offer both Cloud and on-premise deployment modes using the same single codebase.
Manufacturingtalk has now published our article which examines how to upgrade IT application functionality for the manufacturing industry.
In particular, the article examines subsribing to a SaaS vs. custom-building the software application in-house using rich internet application platforms such as uniPaaS.
For a more in-depth look at the application technology needs of the manufacturing sector and how they can be solved have a look at the following web page and white paper.
Smelling a journalistic opportunity, I managed to grab ten minutes with Regev Yativ, our President and CEO for the Americas, who happened to be visiting Magic Software's HQ during this holiday week.
Regev has been making waves in 2009, particularly with Magic Software's mobile solution offering. Below is the full transcript of our interview.
Also, here is our latest White Paper: '6 Tips for Building Mobile Enterprise Applications in 2010'
The Mobile Enterprise Market - An Interview with Regev Yativ. By Sam Green.
SG: What's your take on the shape of the mobile market as we head into 2010?
RY: We are seeing some misconceptions in the mobile market where people tend to confuse the "mass mobile market" and the enterprise mobile market. The mass market requires a very high level of browser based interactivity, AV streaming and a number of other basic functions that are not always relevant for enterprise users. However, since mobile devices are today as basic as bread and butter, it means that enterprise users are being influenced more than ever before by the use and functionality of their devices and are looking to develop new expectations in their work environment as well. They are all focused on what they can do more with their mobile device or PDA.
So the mass market today is more of an influencer than ever before. We must nevertheless remember that it's not the end-game. So when we talk about Magic Software's mobile offering, we are referring specifically to solutions especially designed for enterprises.
SG: What does Magic Software have to offer that's unique?
RY: I believe that the beauty of our offering is its simplicity. The uniPaaS mobile client that we are talking about today is simply an additional deployment mode of an otherwise uniPaaS-developed Rich Internet Application (RIA). This is one of the biggest advantages that Magic Software has to offer today. As a Magic customer, this means you can take a single set of code that you initially intended to deploy as a standard RIA application, and deploy that same code, with some modifications, as a mobile application. This does require some programming changes (such as scaling down the screen, adjusting the presentation etc) however; the level of modification needed is minor when you work in the uniPaaS environment. This is great news for all operators looking to transfer their applications onto mobile devices quickly and smoothly.
SG: What does this mean practically for enterprises out there?
RY: Practically, this means that if I have a mobile workforce in an enterprise environment, or workers based in remote locations, or away-from-office teams, with different smart phones and PDAs that are being operated from anywhere in the world, I can now integrate these workers into my enterprise resource pool and exploit such resources seamlessly, as if they were sitting next door.
As an example, if you're a field engineer, and you're sent to Texas to fix an oil pump in the middle of nowhere, it can be very difficult to get connectivity into your enterprise resources in a conventional way. It may also be impractical to use standard computers and laptops. In such a situation you could now turn to your mobile phone or smart phone and use a uniPaaS mobile client to connect and fully use the functionality of your enterprise application as if you never left the office.
And of course, we must remember that this level of immediate service is worth diamonds to the customer. As one can imagine, each hour that the oil pump is out of operation it costs millions in damages and lost revenues.
SG: What's your main focus for 2010 and beyond regarding mobile solutions?
RY: Currently, Magic Software is already deployed on the Windows CE/mobile environment for several customers. We also have a number of customers now examining this option for deployment in 2010. Along with this, we are planning to come to market in the first quarters of 2010 with specialized web templates and functionality for the most common mobile platforms such as Blackberry and iPhone. Considering that the majority of enterprises in the US run Blackberry and for the most part run Blackberry enterprise servers as well, our main strategy for the coming year will be to invest in perfecting our Blackberry enterprise offering.
The agility of our uniPaaS unitary platform combined with the integration layer that iBOLT brings will be playing a key role in achieving the sort of specialized solutions that Blackberry and other mobile platforms users are looking for in fields ranging from heavy industry to government, local municipalities and corporate sectors.
SG: Tell me more about how Magic Software's iBOLT business integration suite is being used to improve the mobile enterprise experience for customers?
RY: One of the unique advantages of Magic Software is the fact that we have an unrivalled and multi-layered technology stack. At the front-end this takes the shape of the uniPaaS application platform that allows you to rapidly and cost-effectively build and deploy your mobile application as we discussed earlier. At the back-end this takes the form of the iBOLT business integration suite that lets you integrate your mobile application with a host of other business applications in the enterprise.
By linking mobile application development and deployment with enterprise application integration, many of our customers are now able to optimize and streamline their operations. As a result they can better exploit out-of-office resources, and all this works towards saving an enormous amount of money as well as creating new business opportunities.
One of the key messages we are trying to deliver regarding mobility is that it's not enough to convert ‘data' into ‘information'. It's also vital that you have maximum accessibility to this information - allowing decision makers to make accurate business decisions in real time.
To summarize, our strategy is to help our customers reach their full ‘information mobility' potential - from both ends of the enterprise, from corporate management for overall decision making to the workforce for enabling better operations and customer service.
On a personal note, from the constant interaction we have with customers, partners and analysts, we have no doubt that the mobile enterprise market is going to explode in the coming years and we are very excited to be in a position where we can offer and deliver in stages, all the needed solutions to support that.
SG: Thank you for your time and we look forward to hearing from you again later in the year.
RY: Thank you.
Rich Internet applications and their brainchild, software-as-a-service (SaaS), are expensive to build. Today they represent the most challenging development process yet.
Regev Yativ, Magic Software's President & CEO for the Americas tells Enterprise Systems how to get around the complexity of building and deploying RIA and SaaS in this article just out.
Other collateral news - we have a new case study now available - this one is about FKB - a Liechtenstein-based health insurance provider that, using uniPaaS, has become the largest health insurance provider in Lichtenstein with the lowest operating costs in the industry for both Liechtenstein and Switzerland.
Website news, we've added even more new items to our solutions section - this time focusing on Magic Software's solutions for specific industry verticals - so far we have healthcare, manufacturing, finance, government and logistics - along with relevant case studies that describe some of the real-life challenges and implementations in each industry.
And lastly, the first of two Get IT Together seminars is happening in Connecticut today. Last minute places are still available for the Nov 12th event in San Diego. If you are interested in attending ring as soon as possible to reserve your place on - 949 250 1718.
Following on from my previous manufacturing posts, I've now compiled the main 5 benefits of Rich Internet Applications (RIA) for manufacturing industries into a new white paper that you can download for free here.
Rich Internet Applications are particularly beneficial to manufacturing companies. That's because the nature of manufacturing requires a combination of powerful business functionality (to handle their diverse work scope - including production, delivery, inventory, sales force etc), that they need to display in a myriad of ways (graphically and in complex table format), and they need it available anywhere (at the production line site as well as on the move in the warehouse etc).
They can get this sort of rich internet functionality today by sourcing it from a SaaS vendor of course. It's quick to assimilate, and cost-effective to run. The only problem is if the vendor doesn't have exactly the type of functionality that the manufacturer needs. There's not much room for customization with an off-the-shelf SaaS product.
There is then an advantage to building your own RIA in house - as long as it can be done without incurring high costs and an over-long development effort!
The white paper first highlights the benefits of RIA to manufacturers and then describes the most efficient and effective path to implementing RIA in-house.
All comments and feeback are welcome!
In a 2009 UK based survey commissioned by the 'The Loyalty Practice at HS&P' it was found that almost one quarter of British consumers say they are less brand loyal now than they were 12 months ago.
According to Louise Isaacs, head of The Loyalty Practice, "With cash-conscious consumers paying closer attention to the purchases they make, businesses are having to fight harder to keep customers coming back."
And his solution: "brands must focus more on engaging customers during their buying cycle to capture more data and build better relationships."
Obvious really - in a business environment where customers are more demanding and brand loyalty harder to capture and keep, customer engagement is key to an organization's success.
In a recent study on engagement by the Economist Intelligence Unit, 80% of executives said that better engagement translates into improved customer loyalty, and 75% said they believed it meant higher profits.
Engagement is critical to transforming customers into active advocates for a product or business. That's where Rich Internet Applications (RIA) are making headway.
In March 2007, Forrester Research published The Business Case for Rich Internet Applications, a report based on interviews with RIA technology providers and designers, as well as Forrester Research clients and customers. The report revealed that "well-designed RIAs can produce eye-popping results that can help prove the value of current investments and make the case for future RIA projects."
RIAs can make customer interactions more compelling, dynamic, and useful - in short - more engaging. And this is what will give businesses that critical edge over their competitors when times are tough - and it looks like these times are settling in for quite a long stay.