PHP UK Conference 2009

I recently attended the UK’s largest PHP developer conference in Olympia, hoping to pick up some new ideas and tech to apply to Claromentis‘ software suite.

I was really looking forward to two specific sessions at the conference, one on Adobe Flex/AIR, and one concerning a new type of database from the MySQL team, based on high-scalability.

Flex and AIR for PHP Programmers

Presented by Mihai Corlan, we got into this pretty quickly and were given some very quick and easy looking demonstrations on how to use Flex & AIR to prettify our PHP server-side apps with elegant and fast desktop clients. This was of interest in terms of Claromentis as a multi-platform, web-technology based desktop client would certainly appeal to customers who are unhappily bounded by their web-browser. It also gives a level cross-platform playing field for development, and punts quite a lot of the browser-compatibility concerns so common for web developers into the grass.

As a company based on Open Source technology, perhaps my only fear for a Claromentis suite using Flex & AIR extensively is being tied into a proprietary solution over which the users have no real control. A choice which most software companies have no doubt had to make.

Clouds on the horizon? Get ready for Drizzle

Unfortunately named “Drizzle”, which hardly suggests stellar performance, the website (and not a small amount of the presentation) suggests:

“A database optimized for Cloud and Net applications. It is being designed for massive concurrency on modern multi-cpu/core architecture.”

Just what’s required if you’ve ever watched the single-process MySQLD struggling with a large query, with your other 7 cores sitting mostly idle.
There wasn’t a massive amount of mature technology to see here, but the ideas for making everybody’s lives easier, from deployment to administration, as well as harnessing all of the dormant CPU power in MySQL servers the world over make this an irresistable concept. I hope to see much more solid tech to play with in the future.

Claromentis currently supports any of Oracle, MS SQL Server or MySQL, and Drizzle really would be another feather in the cap for database support when it’s in a mature state.

Intranet-Extranet Adobe, conference, databases, development, php

In some new content on our site this week we stressed the fact that when you purchase Claromentis to deploy a collaboration framework you are buying much more than proprietary software that might lose its value over the coming years.

Instead Claromentis is a true intranet framework – in essence what it creates is a standard set of interrelated web based content, processes and application files that are formed and configured into a collaboration structure to suit your requirements.

With the extensive customization possibilities in all Claromentis products, the open source extendable nature of the system, the API and Process Manager plug-ins this really is a world away from buying software and hoping it will suit your needs.

We point this out on “7 good reasons to consider Claromentis” – it is a theme that is becoming increasingly important as customers look for increased choice, flexibility and value.

Solutions intranet software

As we are all know discover.claromentis.com is our customer support portal. We’re currently planning to redesign the site. The idea is focus on simplicity and ease of use.
These are some new features:

1.       New Logo (cleaner and simpler)
2.       Customer logo will be displayed
3.       Permission based menu system and with extensive publish template
4.       Emphasise on 3 main areas: HELPDESK | WIKI | FORUM (feel free to change this)
5.       Dashboard to show basic stats such as “Monthly status”
6.       Future homepage component to display : “No of ticket need attentions”.. etc
7.       Seamless experience when navigating on Claromentis WIKI pages

Feedback welcomed

Services Design, internal customer communications, internet intern program, user interface

Recently we were discussing about development of  an Intranet system for a large organisation and capture how it seen from different roles involved in the projects:

My classic problem is how you translate this requests into software:

Solutions humor, internal customer communications, intranet consultancy, intranet software discussions, user interface

I have posted on several occasions that in my opinion the main focus of corporate collaboration systems should be increasing innovation, and I wanted to explore this theme again.

Given this premise we know that the main areas in which a corporation can innovate through collaboration is either across internal silos – classically functional or geographic -  or into the extended enterprise – most obviously through the supply chain but also of course into other partners and customers.

But I becoming concerned that the understanding of many of our clients is still slightly behind at least our own version of the web 2.0 enabled corporate vision. Lets take the supply chain as my specific  example for this post.

We have several clients that look to leverage the Claromentis portal as a way of reaching out to suppliers – something we enjoy and of course can facilitate very easily.

But what I am seeing is that still this is being viewed as the “next generation of outsourcing” – e-portal procurement for example, and not any transforming engagement with the extended supply chain. The focus too often is on practicalities – central procurement, contract based document management and price efficiencies.

To me this is just an expression of command and control using web 1.0. What we at Claromentis are excited about is ways to interact with a potential community of suppliers that are no longer supplying products – but are helping to provide the actual product design, because our client specifically does not have that expertise – and so must reach out to the extended enterprise to collaborate in order to innovate.

In this world of supply side web 2.0 innovation the purchaser – in our case a client using Claromentis  – acknowledges that it does not have the skill to define more than the basic details of what it requires to purchase – often a particular component -  in order to deliver the ideal product it needs to take to the market in a value proposition it understands.

In this situation suppliers are partners, and the web is a true network of idea exchange and innovation. This is an example of corporate web 2.0 in action, a million ways from an electronic version of command and control – and it is exciting.

Companies that participate are extending their talent pool in ways that ignore traditional boundaries.

Solutions

We’ve been asked many times, what is Claromentis model of deployment? The truth is we are probably the most flexible company in terms of software deployment by offering wide range of configurations to suit your business and infrastructure.

1.    In your office

Claromentis can be installed in one of your servers located in your office. This configuration eliminates cost of the hardware from us. In most cases it works well if you have a good and reliable in-house IT department who can take care of the servers, back-ups and access issues.

2.    Our Data Centre

Working together with our data centre partner Rackspace, we offer a fully managed package. Your software and data are hosted in a secure data centre outside allowing full peace of mind about hardware software patches, and backups.

3.    Your  Data Centre

We can work with any data centre or IT partners you may have to arrange hosting and servers configuration. This configuration is ideal if you have several applications hosted on existing infrastructure such as which you may want to integrate with Claromentis.

4.    Software as a Service

Increasingly popular for SME market, SaaS alleviates the customer’s burden of managing IT infrastructure, and reduce the up-front expense of the software purchase. Claromentis system can be deployed faster with no hassle.

Services Claromentis, hardware, intranet consultancy, intranet development, software