The first of two Get IT Together seminars on how to create business results from information technology took place yesterday in Connecticut and was a tremendous success.
In a jam packed, standing-room only event, it brought together Magic Software's customers and prospects to hear about the latest innovations in the world of application platforms and business integration technology.
Here are some of the inital photos from the event (excuse some of the quality here). Thanks to Cathy for these!
Regev Yativ, our CEO and President for Magic Software Americas (seen speaking here) gave a visionary keynote address, laying out the major challenges faced by both enterprise companies and ISVs today.
Eyal Pfeifel (standing, right) our newly appointed CTO, presented Magic Software's technology roadmap.
Attendees at the Connecticut 'Get IT together' seminar. We received excellent customer feedback on the evaluation forms all the way around.
Glenn Johnson, our VP Marketing for Magic Software Americas, explains the workings of the iBOLT Business Integration Suite's Studio.
Regev Yativ, in his keynote address - elaborating on the business advantages of metadata application platforms.
The Get IT Together presenters, (from the left), Eyal Pfeifel, Regev Yativ and Glenn Johnson.
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!
We are getting closer to seeing you all at the Get IT together conferences in San Diego and Connecticut.
This is the one Magic Software event that has it all: top notch instructors, key Magic Software executives, networking opportunites with your peers and great locations. We have a block of rooms reserved until Monday October 26. After that you are on your own with the hotels at much higher rates. The savings by booking through the registration site are as much as $110 per night, so I recommend you book through the site right now.
Not only will our new Magic Software CTO, Eyal Pfeifel, be presenting the new technology roadmap, but we will have top experts like Steve Worthington and Michael Singer presenting uniPaaS and iBOLT in a way that is both educational and informative. I can assure you that this event will have someting for everyone.
So don't miss out. See the full agenda and register here.
After months of hard work and planning, yesterday we went live with our new company website.
We've tried our best to make the messages clearer - so that readers immediately understand that Magic Software technology is about building business applications and integrating IT applications.
As part of the company's application platform capabilities - Magic Software enables organizations to cost-efficiently move to Cloud Computing models - including Rich Internet Applications, Mobile Applications, and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) models.
Other changes worth noting - we've put a rolling 'customer' section on the home page. Magic Software has some surprising big-name customers and the list of worldwide organizations using our technology is almost endless.
Another section I particularly like is the new solutions section - where we've added new pages for Enterprise and ISVs.
In particular, I've tried to use these pages to explain the advantages of metadata - and illustrated the power of metadata-powered platforms by asking some of the most common industry relevant question's such as:
- How do I develop more cost-effective IT operations?
- How do I ensure my application meets business demand effectively?
- How can I optimize my development team's productivity?
- How do I preserve my core investments & ensure future functionality?
- How do I maximize security for my new web applications?
Anyway, don't be shy. Do have a look and let us know what you think - or make constructive (!) suggestions for further improvements.
Well, you've all waited patiently for it to happen and now its here.
The crazy cats video that's been making such a splash on YouTube has now been updated with the 'correct' cat-laguage translation.
See the video here.
All thanks to my collegue Ofer Spiegel for taking the time out of his busy schedule to translate what they were really saying.
Enjoy.
60% of companies in a recent AIG Consulting poll were found to suffer from marginally successful technology projects or outright project failures.
A full half of this number experienced project ‘runaways' which take too long to deliver, consume too much budget, or under-deliver on functionality.
The Get IT together seminar is designed specifically to address the problems that lead to IT project failure.
How? By helping organizations to optimize their software systems and IT departments to better deliver business results.
Attendees can expect to learn:
- How to align IT department objectives with your overall business goals
- How to better streamline the application development process
- How to more effectively deliver IT projects
- How to get your business applications working together
- How to ensure your current goals answer future business needs
If you are a CEO, CIO or IT manager these issues should already be sounding alarm bells in your head.
To find out more about seminar sessions topics and times, speakers and locations, visit the Get IT together website.
To secure an invitation online register or contact Glenn Johnson direct on +1 949 250 1718 or email glenn_johnson@magicsoftware.com.
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.
We've spoken previously about the need for Information Technology to evolve into Business Technology.
Here's how Forrester explains things:
Every aspect of the enterprise is increasingly embodied in the technology it uses, from process application-driven business operations to Internet-based interactions with customers and suppliers. Although today, only a few enterprises recognize the implications of this trend, within five years most will realize that this "business technology" (BT) is vital to delivering business results. Enterprises will embrace the competitive potential of technology and actively manage its use. BT providers will hone offerings to enhance business results, flexibility, and configurability.
I understand from this the following:
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Technology is becoming more important to all aspects of a business' operations.
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Companies will soon realize (if not already) that to remain competitive they need their information technology to deliver real business results.
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Companies that aquire IT systems that focus on 'business' delivery rather than 'technology' will end up the winners - by cutting their operational costs, improving productivity and increasing market share.
So if you're an enterprise company with an internal IT department or an ISV trying to stay afload against giant SaaS vendors here's your chance to gain a step ahead:
Magic Software is holding a special, one day seminar this November in the United States:
Get IT together will give you the knowledge and tools to more effectively utilize your IT resources and deliver quantifiable business results in a reasonable time.
The seminar is equally suited for business executives and IT professionals alike.
Get IT together is being held in only two locations -
- Uncasville, Connecticut on November 10
- San Diego, California on November 12
This seminar will feature some of industry's leading technology experts in the fields of application development, RIA, SaaS, business integration and IT business optimization.
If you're based in the US, or going to be travelling in the US in the second week of November, don't miss out on your chance to attend this FREE day.
In today's business and economic environment there is literally nothing more important that you can be doing right now than learning how to leverage your IT to perform more for your business.
For more information visit http://www.getittogether.us/ or speak directly to my US collegue Glenn Johnson. You can also give him a call to reserve your place on the number below:
To reserve your place now call: 949 250 1718
Here's a useful graph that I found created by Gartner that nicely shows the how the browser has evolved over time.
Beginning with the origin of web applications at left hand side of the chart, we see that Ajax and HTML were designed to give application developers more power and capabilities when creating internet based applications.
It started off well enough, but Ajax never really took hold as well as initially expected. Ajax uses a combination of technologies that makes building the Client interface substantially more difficult than static web pages. It's performance is therefore relatively low when considering the effort that needs to be invested, since it's based on script that needs to be interpreted, rather than on compiled code.
The next step along the chart was the movement in the direction of plug-in's and Java. However, this also presented challenges, particularly with its compatibility with different browser types, with certain applets not being able to run properly.
The solution then, was for the industry to move to applications that run ‘outside the browser'. These apps run on the middleware stack but still use a runtime language such as Java or .NET.
This seems to be the most practical solution then, both in terms of cost and performance. Typical business application, we must remember, are characterized by complex and heavily loaded data. This data needs to be displayable and retrievable in an efficient manner.
The browser is simply not designed for that. To compound the problem, there are now so many different browser types out there (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and now Google Chrome) that preparing the application to run on each is a coder's nightmare.
The solution then is obvious - scrap the browser altogether as a business application sandbox - and use a tool that has a dedicated business-optimized front-end layer.
That's uniPaaS.
You'll find it far more secure as well.