Experiencing a Different Corporate Culture at QAD Explore 2008

This topic starts with the latest user interface (UI) enhancements based on harnessing Microsoft .NET Framework (while the relationship with Progress Software on the business logic and server side as well as service-oriented architecture [SOA]-based integration remains as strong as ever).

QAD has not traditionally been “accused” of offering a great UI metaphor (look-and-feel), but that might all change now as the vendor strives to appeal to new (”X” and “Y”) generations of users. QAD aptly showcased not only a prominent consumer electronics maker (with its own line of retail stores), but also a Swiss knife-like manufacturer and an automated teller machine (ATM) manufacturer as its customers. All of these products are well-known for their elegant usability and user-friendliness.

Similarly, QAD .NET UI features ease of role-based personalization, adding/removing fields, menu maintenance, desktop applications integration, messaging, etc. for end users. Other notable capabilities are data access and integration, look-and-feel consistency, eLearning, etc.

Especially impressive are the graphical process maps, modeled according to the Supply Chain Council’s SCOR metrics and intuitively arranged à la multi-layered maps of the London “tube” (subway). End users can navigate these process maps up-and-down via “business cycle - business process - individual session screen” layers, which also comes in handy for training and documenting best practices.

Processing Complex Events (During These, oh well, Complex Times) – Part II

For one, Apama revenues have increased multiple times (e.g., 70 percent growth in fiscal 2008). This growth probably makes Progress the market share leader in the CEP market, together with the fact that Progress Apama currently has approximately 110 customer deployments.

A sampling of Apama customers, those that Progress has publicly announced, can be found at the company’s website here. The product’s “sweet spot” and leading presence to date has been in the Capital Markets and Financial Services segments for high frequency trading applications. Apama’s customer profiles range from the largest sell-side firms in the world to smaller, boutique buy-side firms.

Furthermore, Progress Apama now has a worldwide footprint, with deployments in North and South America, throughout Europe, the Middle East, Australia, Japan, and Korea. The product now logically supports some internationalization capabilities. Last but not least (and to be detailed later) Apama has expanded in capability with more CEP functionality, sophisticated development tools, flexible event capture and replay, visual dashboards, and open integration framework, while emphasizing less on just promoting the product’s high performance and scalability (e.g., sub-millisecond latency for thousands of scenarios) traits.

Progress Apama customers are generally distinguished by a desire to leverage the product’s rapid application development (RAD) tools to build unique trading or trading-related applications that allow them to incorporate their own business logic, rather than packaged, off-the-shelf applications. While the company’s early market adoption has been in capital markets, Progress Apama has also established penetration outside financial sectors in other event-driven environments.

Other sectors are telecommunications, supply chain/logistics, energy grid monitoring, manufacturing process monitoring, retail banking fraud detection, entertainment (i.e., gaming surveillance), and other areas. For example, when it comes to telecommunication providers’ revenue assurance, a CEP platform could monitor the billing of several million subscribers across multimedia channels (i.e., voice/video, data, content, and unlimited multimedia messaging service [UMMS]), to prevent revenue loss in real-time.

Real-life and Prospective CEP Deployments Outside Capital Markets

At Progress Software’s Analyst Summit 2009, there was a case study presentation about Apama empowering advanced international logistics in terms of shipping and ports management. The customer is Royal Dirkzwager, which since its founding in 1872 has developed into the maritime information and service provider for Northwest Europe, with a strong focus on the Port of Rotterdam.

Dirkzwager deals with vast information on vessels’ characteristics, ship’s position reports, and ever-varying estimated times of arrival (ETAs) and actual times of arrival (ATAs). From about 200 position reports per second 10 years ago or so, today the company has to deal with over 1,000 position reports per second. Dirkzwager’s public sector customers are the related port authorities, port state control, customs, seaport police, and coast guard. Private sector customers are ship owners and agents, terminals, and service providers (pilots, tugs, maintenance crews, etc.).

Processing Complex Events (During These, oh well, Complex Times) – Part II

For one, Apama revenues have increased multiple times (e.g., 70 percent growth in fiscal 2008). This growth probably makes Progress the market share leader in the CEP market, together with the fact that Progress Apama currently has approximately 110 customer deployments.

A sampling of Apama customers, those that Progress has publicly announced, can be found at the company’s website here. The product’s “sweet spot” and leading presence to date has been in the Capital Markets and Financial Services segments for high frequency trading applications. Apama’s customer profiles range from the largest sell-side firms in the world to smaller, boutique buy-side firms.

Furthermore, Progress Apama now has a worldwide footprint, with deployments in North and South America, throughout Europe, the Middle East, Australia, Japan, and Korea. The product now logically supports some internationalization capabilities. Last but not least (and to be detailed later) Apama has expanded in capability with more CEP functionality, sophisticated development tools, flexible event capture and replay, visual dashboards, and open integration framework, while emphasizing less on just promoting the product’s high performance and scalability (e.g., sub-millisecond latency for thousands of scenarios) traits.

Progress Apama customers are generally distinguished by a desire to leverage the product’s rapid application development (RAD) tools to build unique trading or trading-related applications that allow them to incorporate their own business logic, rather than packaged, off-the-shelf applications. While the company’s early market adoption has been in capital markets, Progress Apama has also established penetration outside financial sectors in other event-driven environments.

Other sectors are telecommunications, supply chain/logistics, energy grid monitoring, manufacturing process monitoring, retail banking fraud detection, entertainment (i.e., gaming surveillance), and other areas. For example, when it comes to telecommunication providers’ revenue assurance, a CEP platform could monitor the billing of several million subscribers across multimedia channels (i.e., voice/video, data, content, and unlimited multimedia messaging service [UMMS]), to prevent revenue loss in real-time.

Real-life and Prospective CEP Deployments Outside Capital Markets

At Progress Software’s Analyst Summit 2009, there was a case study presentation about Apama empowering advanced international logistics in terms of shipping and ports management. The customer is Royal Dirkzwager, which since its founding in 1872 has developed into the maritime information and service provider for Northwest Europe, with a strong focus on the Port of Rotterdam.

Dirkzwager deals with vast information on vessels’ characteristics, ship’s position reports, and ever-varying estimated times of arrival (ETAs) and actual times of arrival (ATAs). From about 200 position reports per second 10 years ago or so, today the company has to deal with over 1,000 position reports per second. Dirkzwager’s public sector customers are the related port authorities, port state control, customs, seaport police, and coast guard. Private sector customers are ship owners and agents, terminals, and service providers (pilots, tugs, maintenance crews, etc.).