October 15, 2007
Aplicor Product Evolution
I had some great client calls this week and one of the recurring questions posed by three very active users centered around product advancement. They were seeking to understand the most significant and highest impact product advancements coming down the pike. I'll use this post to satisfy this inquiry for them and for any interested client.
The highest impact product advancements clearly come from the underlying software architecture as it is the architecture that provides cross-module capabilities that are generally pervasive throughout the entire product and often facilitate new capabilities, new flexibility and support for third party tools and products. As most users know, our CRM and ERP product architecture leverages the .NET (C#) development environment, the Microsoft platform stack (e.g. SQL 2K5, Windows Server 2003, etc.), XML and a SOA (service oriented architecture). The architectural planning and development now occurring and expected for delivery in 2008 continues our planned technology evolution by taking advantage of new capabilities inherent in upcoming platform releases and increased industry SOA adoption.
For example, SQL 2008 (aka Longhorn) is scheduled for delivery next year. We've been analyzing this new product in the lab for several months and are now piloting development projects expected to realize two significant Aplicor flagship product advancements.
The first will achieve advancements in performance, scalability, systems management and system fault tolerance. The visible results to the end user will include faster performance, an improved user experience and assured uptime (continued assurance for achievement of our SLA). For our multi-national users, we are also prototyping some new mirroring and high availability (HA) capabilities which will be implemented in each of our global data centers and we expect will result in decreased latency and increased system performance for clients with users on multiple continents.
Its pretty simple to transcend these architectural advancements to an Aplicor modular level. The new SQL Reporting Services and Analysis Services will of course result in upgrades for Reports, report writer, data warehousing and OLAP (online analytical processing). We're advancing our Workflow Tools in concert with Microsoft's advancement of their Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF) service. It appears WWF will provide a significant infrastructure upgrade to Aplicor Workflow and additionally expose new BAM (business activity management) and other user-defined automation capabilities - for example BPI (business process improvement) or BPR (business process reengineering) exercises. A final component we're evaluating however have not yet committed to is the PerformancePoint Services. An interesting product with big ERP implications, particularly advanced budgeting and financial analysis, however, still much evaluation to go.
The most user-centric change is likely to come in the form of an enhanced user interface (UI) via MS Silverlight (formerly known as Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere or WPF/E). We've always been conscience of a great UI and I think Silverlight will take us to the next UI level. Silverlight is a very powerful web rendering technology, platform tool and runtime capable of delivering very rich browser-based applications. From a semi-technical perspective, Silverlight supports XAML, vector graphics, and impressive animation to provide graphical and event-driven browser-based applications that rival desktop applications. This should support our many-to-one account viewing and one click to anywhere navigation very nicely. A few other benefits include cross-browser support for IE, Firefox and Safari and a compact .NET CLR (common language runtime) for downloading cloud-based applications to a local desktop or vice versa. We also like the multiple development language support. While Aplicor of course uses C#, Silverlight also supports Javascript (ECMA 3.0), VB, python and Ruby. We use Ruby-based testing and QA scripts so will likely blend them with Silverlight as well.
That's the product planning evolution at an architectural level. As we get closer to 2008 beta deliveries, I'll transcend from architectural evolution to more modular feature/functionality enhancements.
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Posted by Chuck Schaeffer on October 15, 2007 in CRM Software, ERP Software
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Silverlight versus Flash
Posted by Jeremy Skellis on October 18, 2007
Isn't Silverlight a Flash competitor? What does Silverlight offer that you can't get from Flash?
Merging the design and development communities
Posted by Chuck Schaeffer on October 18, 2007
Silverlight is absolutely a Flash competitor. It's also a competitor to Sun's JavaFX which was launched a couple days after Silverlight. However, no question about it, Flash is the direct competitor and clearly in the Microsoft cross hairs.
Silverlight integrates multimedia, animations, graphics and dynamic interactivity into a single runtime. While Flash is a staple among the design community, its delivery is low resolution and low quality compared to Silverlight which trumps Flash with access to HD and full-fidelity video at a respectable 700Kbps of bandwidth. More importantly from an Aplicor perspective, Silverlight better accommodates data extensibility capabilities by making content more searchable and indexable than Flash as it is not compiled but instead represented as text (XAML). Even for designers, Silverlight's XAML (Extensible Application Markup Language) permits Silverlight code to be written with a simple text editor (or fourth generation visual tool) thereby opening coded solutions for inspection by search engines and other tools (a capability that's always been a major Flash weakness).
However, while Silverlight has impressive multimedia capabilities that challenge Flash's core competency, its also much more of a enterprise development environment that delivers greater extensibility as well as much tighter native integration and embedded support to the MS technology stack (e.g. SQL 2K5, WS03, IIS, Vista, etc.), MS desktop (Office) programs, and Windows Live Services (Live, Search, Windows Messenger, Virtual Earth, etc.) While I think Silverlight will lack in pure designer adoption as Adobe retains an entrenched following, I expect Microsoft will slowly erode that designer market share and establish a much larger leadership position in bringing an enterprise design tool to a much larger developer community that has historically been unexcited about design tools.
Don't count Flash out
Posted by Malcome on October 18, 2007
I think you underestimate Flash. It has a great history and a strong following.
Agreed
Posted by Chuck Schaeffer on October 18, 2007
I agree with you. However, I"m not sure its history is indicative of its future. I've personally subscribed to Macromedia tools for over 10 years. In my opinion, ever since the Adobe acquisition of Macromedia, the product has incurred a steady loss of momentum and excitement. I don't think Adobe has the same passion for Flash as its original creators. In this case, I think the owner of Flash contributes greater exposure to lost market share than the product's technical capabilities. Just my opinion.
Better support for multi-national users
Posted by Samuel Kapplin on October 19, 2007
How are you going to decrease latency for users on multiple continents? Seems impossible.
More intelligent routing to more mirrored global data centers
Posted by Chuck Schaeffer on October 19, 2007
Good catch Samuel. My comment of decreasing latency does need some additional support. We'd like to change latency, however, in reality we can neither change the physical distance between continents nor the speed of light. Therefore, the best we can do is optimize IP traffic and provide additional global delivery points to eliminate cross continent distances. These are the two methods we employ. Our IP traffic optimization is done in large part through web accelerator devices (sometimes called Application Front Ends or AFEs) which perform highly effective caching, compression, TCP optimization, load balancing and routing optimization. They also interact with BGP for more efficient (fewer hops) IP delivery across NAPs and peering networks. The devices deliver an exponential value when combined with multiple global data centers. In our situation, our global data centers are configured in an active/active mode with real-time mirroring. This permits a client's European users to access the London data center while their American users access the North American data center and all users of the same company view, share and exchange the same synchronized data irrespective of the software delivery location. This is our approach to improving latency. Possibly better said, we're not improving latency performance as much as we're eliminating IP traffic distance by placing software delivery points much closer to the users.
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