SOLID FRAMEWORKS

+
Proven Expertise

ENTERPRISE-GRADE SOFTWARE APPLICATIONS IN LESS TIME

Contents
Solid frameworks + proven expertise = Enterprise-grade software applications in less time ....................2 Software development is hard.........................................................................................................2 Stunning rates of project failure and excessive costs.........................................................................2 Can we make software development predictable?............................................................................3 Software frameworks code that you do not build...........................................................................3 Employed frameworks should be commonly available and in broad use ........................................4 Access to experts who can help with customization insight and support ........................................4 The Syncfusion solution enterprise-grade applications in less time..................................................4 Solid Frameworks .......................................................................................................................5 Proven expertise.........................................................................................................................5 Focus areas ....................................................................................................................................5 Visualization...............................................................................................................................5 Business Intelligence...................................................................................................................6 Enterprise Reporting...................................................................................................................7 Enterprise Mobility .....................................................................................................................7 Summary ...........................................................................................................................................8

Solid frameworks + proven expertise = Enterprise-grade software applications in less time

Software development is hard
The role of software as a key enabler in our world seems to expand with every passing year. Today, every organization in the world, whether big, small, or anywhere in between, needs software to runs its business. Consider some of the use cases below and their impact on the deploying organizations core business mission. Retailers use software to predict demand and track inventory. Meteorologists use sophisticated software models to predict and track weather patterns. Search engines index billions of pages of data and return query results in seconds. Banks process millions of transactions per hour and track each of them in real time. Airlines depend on software to price tickets, and increasingly, to fly planes. Software is being used to assist in complex surgery.

The most exciting aspect of software proliferation is that this is only the beginning many more frontiers are to be conquered. While most organizations need software to power their business, the challenges involved in the development of complex software systems have not diminished. Indeed, as processing power and the amount of data produced and consumed have increased, we have also seen an exponential increase in the complexity of software development. For many organizations, the challenges involved with the production of software have taken on a magnitude comparable to any other business challenges they face. To help manage these challenges, more organizations now rely on the professional skills of software solution vendors to deliver solutions that meet their business needs. The reasoning is that organizations that specialize in software development will be able to better manage the development process and produce results that are in line with business requirements in a predictable manner.

Stunning rates of project failure and excessive costs

Ideally, software development processes should be able to achieve predictable output in a consistent manner, much like other production aspects of the company. In fact, many professional software development organizations promise just this. Many software solution providers are very large organizations that employ thousands of developers. These organizations promise the benefits of factories, and in the ideal world, they should be able to deliver software that works as expected and is delivered on time and under budget. In spite of aggressive efforts taken to tame software development complexity by delegating development to third parties, software projects continue to fail or exceed budgets. Consider business

intelligence (BI) projects that are vital to many business initiatives in the coming decade. Research firm Gartner, Inc. states that the failure rate for BI projects is as high as 70 to 80% 1. Various studies have documented failure rates greater than 50% for software projects. If these rates were applied to other scenarios, such as the construction of bridges, for example, they would be completely unacceptable. Why, then, does software development continue to be fraught with high risks and alarmingly high rates of failure? The reasons are not hard to identify. Many software development providers present software development as an activity that can be managed akin to that of a tightly controlled process in a manufacturing plant. Once this fallacy takes root in the relationship between the customer and the solution provider, the solution for all maladies observed is simply the addition of more resources. Almost four decades ago, Fred Brooks in his seminal work The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering 2 warned that software development does not correspond linearly with the addition of resources. As documented by Brooks and observed in countless projects, the task of building software even by organizations that specialize in it, is still a discovery-laden, communication-intense, error-prone activity that carries many risks that the simple addition of manpower does not resolve. To this day, many software projects do not take Brooks advice into account, often at great expense. Factories rely on carefully controlled components, assembled by trained resources using carefully defined processes. Each part of the manufacturing process is carefully monitored and tested for compliance with expected standards. None of this happens in the real world of software development by solution providers. At Syncfusion, as a leading vendor of software frameworks for over a decade , we have had a front row seat and have witnessed first-hand the inefficiency of the development process. We have observed that software development by solution providers is nothing like a modern industrial factory.

Can we make software development predictable?

Given this backdrop, is it possible to make software development more predictable? Fred Brooks cautions us that there is no silver bullet. In his essay No Silver Bullet3 he explains that the best choice may indeed be to avoid building software when you can, and that one should instead reuse what is already available for a purpose. While Brooks is referring to pre-packaged software products, the same essential idea applies to the use of software frameworks. Software frameworks that contain pre packaged functionality can greatly expedite the development of aggregate line-of-business (LOB) software.

Software frameworks code that you do not build

The promise of pre-built frameworks to reduce the risks associated with software development is credible and one that every organization should seriously contemplate. However, two critical aspects

http://www.computerweekly.com/news/1280094776/Poor-communication-to-blame-for-business-intelligencefailure-says-Gartner
2 3

http://www.amazon.com/The-Mythical-Man-Month-Engineering-Anniversary/dp/0201835959 http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~cah/G51ISS/Documents/NoSilverBullet.html

need to be considered. In our opinion, only a framework that can stand up to scrutiny under these two aspects will have a measurably positive impact on software projects.

Employed frameworks should be commonly available and in broad use

The most secure encryption protocols in the world are not ones with secret recipes, they are protocols that are published and have been in common use for a long time, subject to years of review and fine tuning. Their open availability leads to broad use and consequent trial by fire. Useful software frameworks should have also passed a similar trial. They should be broadly available and ideally actively used by thousands of customers worldwide. Hidden, company-specific frameworks are of no practical value. In our experience, such frameworks do not help with software development. On the contrary, they introduce untested code often leading to the multiplication of risks. Solution providers often claim that they have vast arrays of frameworks that can be customized to suit a specific customers requirements. In reality these frameworks, when they exist, are not marketvalidated bodies of code. In many cases they are internal to the solution provider and were tested and validated only by their organization.

Access to experts who can help with customization insight and support
Frameworks often mask a great deal of complexity. As an example, consider Syncfusions framework for reading and writing Microsoft Excel files. The framework has been in use for over a decade and is currently used by thousands of large organizations to produce and consume Excel files. It handles every Excel file format, including the legacy Binary Interchange File Format (BIFF) and the current Office Open XML4 file format. The Excel file format is extremely complex5 as it has been specified and revised to support the needs of what is arguably the most commonly used business application in the world. Syncfusions Excel file format code consists of hundreds of thousands of lines. It has over 10,000 unit tests. It does the heavy lifting when you wish to output data to Excel. You can create Excel files complete with charts, pivot tables, formula cells, and spark lines from within your .NET application using only a few lines of code. Given the complexity of the underlying framework, you should always be aware of the law of leaky abstractions, which states All non-trivial abstractions, to some degree, are leaky 6. Taking this law into account, we can safely say there is always going to be a case where you need access to experts who are well versed in the framework, and this case occurs often.

The Syncfusion solutionenterprise-grade applications in less time

As a leading provider of software frameworks, Syncfusion is uniquely positioned to leverage our extensive collection of frameworks and deliver custom solutions in as little as 20% of the time typically required.

4 5

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML

Why are the Microsoft Office file formats so complicated? http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/02/19.html

6

The Law of Leaky Abstractions http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/LeakyAbstractions.html

Solid Frameworks
At Syncfusion, we publish over 500 controls and frameworks. These have been recognized multiple times as the best of the best available on the market. They consistently garner five-star ratings from developers who use them 7. Unlike secret-sauce, vendor-specific frameworks, our frameworks are available directly from us as well as from leading software resellers worldwide. You can download the complete framework with thousands of included samples to help you understand exactly how the frameworks function and how they can be used in your application. These very same building blocks are used by over 7,000 customers, including some of the largest organizations in the world, to build software.

Proven expertise
Since Syncfusion develops the frameworks we use to build your custom solution, you can be assured that we have the expertise in-house to use and extend the frameworks in the most optimal manner for your specific needs. Syncfusions solutions team uses our controls and frameworks as a base platform and produces the exact solution you need. In addition, your projects will benefit from our unique approach to testing. In many instances testing remains error prone, brittle, and largely manual. This greatly impedes the ability of a team to deliver releases on shorter cycles. Syncfusion has over a decade of experience with task-specific automated testing frameworks that deliver a high degree of automation and the ability to support thousands of different use cases. We bring this same expertise to your projects, creating a foundation that will make it easier to add features and maintain your code without breaking the application.

Focus areas
Syncfusions solution effort focuses on the following areas: visualization, business intelligence, enterprise reporting, and enterprise mobility.

Visualization
Syncfusion offers a rich framework of visualization and user interface (UI) components that work on any platform. We can create stunning dashboards, high-performance trading screens, or advanced diagramming displays with equal ease. Beautiful charting solutionsSyncfusions powerful charting framework easily handles complex visualization tasks. Powerful diagramming Our diagramming framework visualizes complex business processes, and can be used to model the control system of a modern manufacturing facility. High-performance grids Our grid framework displays millions of rows of data, filters, searches, computes derived values, and exports data into Word, PDF, and Excel files.

Reviews on the independent ComponentSource website http://www.componentsource.com/products/syncfusion-essential-studio-enterprise/reviews.html

Excel-compatible spreadsheet solutionsWith Syncfusions Excel-compatible spreadsheet solution, we can expose your business logic and data to multiple users in a seamless, secure manner with very little effort. High-performance visualization Our visualization frameworks handle millions of data points with no extra optimization effort required. Syncfusion is widely regarded as a market leader in this area. Future-proof HTML 5 UI HTML 5 is emerging as the global standard for building complex, standards-based LOB applications. With our HTML 5 frameworks, we can implement your webbased UI quickly. Desktop UI that stands out Whether traditional desktop or modern, touch-enabled UI, there is no organization outside of Microsoft that has deeper expertise.

If our vast collection of frameworks and controls does not directly meet your need s, we have the expertise to deliver the exact visualization or user interface that you are looking for.

Business Intelligence
Data abounds in every corner of your organization. You have detailed records of customer transactions, their profiles, their preferences, their web activity, support logs, and much more. This data lives in a variety of data stores, some structured and some unstructured. Syncfusion can help you extract key insights from your data, whatever form it may be in. Even a few years ago, business intelligence and data mining solutions were the exclusive preserve of the largest organizations on the planet. The situation is dramatically different now. We can implement a solid business intelligence solution that will provide clear business insight on almost any budget. Beautiful dashboardsDisplay key performance indicators beautifully, complete with rich digital and analog gauges. For power users, direct access to cubesFor power users, our solution framework includes a great ad-hoc analysis tool that can be easily bound to any OLAP back end. Use any back end of your choice Use SQL Server, Oracle, ActivePivot, Mondrian, or pretty much any other back end of your choice. We also offer our own back end for in-memory, multidimensional analysis. Predict the future Perform powerful predictive analysis with your data. Segment your customers, compute advanced product recommendations, use regression models, and much more. Deploy predictive analysis solutions that can handle ultra-fast response times on any platform. Tame big data Syncfusion can leverage Hadoop to help handle millions of records in structured and unstructured formats. We can handle everything including the configuration of cloud-based servers. Integrate Hadoop with your data warehouse and deliver results that are not possible with data alone.

Deploy to web or desktopDeploy your business intelligence solutions on your preferred platform. We offer solution frameworks for web, desktop, and mobile clients.

Enterprise Reporting
Enterprise reporting has long been the domain of high-priced solutions with severe restrictions on use, per-server licensing, and distribution royalties. With Syncfusion, you can implement an enterprise-grade reporting solution that truly has no limits. Your users will obtain rich reports in formats they use every day: Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, and Adobe PDF. Excel reports complete with pivot tables Excel pivot tables are the holy grail of reporting for business users. With Syncfusions reporting solution, we can help you process data from any source and deliver rich Excel reports complete with pivot tables and charts. Produce rich document reports Generate document reports that utilize the power of Microsoft Word. Customize every detail. Perform mail-merge. Generate entire documents from scratch or build them from templates authored in Microsoft Word. Rich standards-based reporting Deploy self-service, what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) reporting that is future proof with our WYSIWYG reporting solution that uses the Microsoft endorsed open standard, Reporting Definition Language (RDL), as its persistence format. Archive data to Adobe PDF Archive any kind of data including plain text, HTML, Word, Excel , and more in PDF format. Produced PDF documents meet data archival standards (PDF/A) and can be stored to meet regulatory compliance requirements. Deploy to web or desktopDeploy reporting solutions on your preferred platform. We offer solution frameworks for web, desktop, and mobile clients. Scalable and cloud-readyDeploy to Windows Azure, Amazon Web Services, or any other cloud server that can host Windows-based solutions. With cloud-based deployments, your reporting solutions can scale to any level, on demand.

Enterprise Mobility
Hybrid mobile applications are quickly becoming the preferred choice when building mobile line-ofbusiness (LOB) applications. With the hybrid model, applications are built using standard HTML 5 and deployed on all major mobile platforms as native apps with complete access to native hardware. Syncfusions exclusive Orubase hybrid framework was specifically des igned for LOB applications. It provides everything needed to quickly build and deploy mobile LOB applications in one package. Orubase-powered solutionsSyncfusions Orubase is the only mobile application development framework built especially for developing complex LOB applications targeting the iOS, Android, and Windows Phone platforms. Future proof with HTML 5The mobile applications we develop are built with standardscompliant HTML 5. Since HTML 5 is widely adopted, you can be assured that investments made around it will last for a very long time. HTML 5 is extremely powerful and allows for a user experience second to none.

Complete access to native hardware Orubase offers complete access to native hardware. Native hardware functionality like the camera, accelerometer, and location are available within the mobile application. Orubase also supports building parts of the mobile application using the native framework of the target device. Offline applicationsSyncfusions Orubase framework has built -in support for building offline applications. If your mobile application has a need to store vast amounts of data or is expected to work under less than ideal network conditions, we can build in offline storage, providing an optimal user experience. Synchronize with enterprise dataSyncfusion also provides a full-fledged synchronization solution that can take offline changes and reconcile them with your enterprise data store. The synchronization solution we implement is well tested, fault tolerant, and extremely scalable. Enterprise reporting is includedOrubase can fully utilize Syncfusions reporting framework. Your mobile application can produce and consume data in Excel, Word, and PDF formats. Convert existing .NET desktop and web applications Orubase makes it very easy to convert existing line-of-business applications built for the desktop and web to mobile applications since the business and database layers that already exist in your current .NET applications can be effectively reused. Secure applicationsOrubase makes it simple to integrate any authentication API of your choice. Active Directory (local or Windows Azure), custom security providers, and LDAP-based systems can all be easily integrated. Scalable, cloud-ready platform Orubase can be deployed to support hundreds of thousands of users. Deploy to Windows Azure, Amazon Web Services, or any other cloud server that can host Windows-based solutions. With cloud-based deployments, your mobile solutions can scale to any level on demand. Deploy using Apple App Store, Google Play, and Windows App Store Mobile applications built using Syncfusions Orubase framework can be deployed to Android, iOS , and Windows Phone devices through platform-specific App stores. Syncfusion can handle the publishing process for you.

Summary
Software development is complex and fraught with risk. Syncfusions custom solutions can help reduce that risk by using well-tested, pre-built frameworks to build your solutions for you. As a global leader in software frameworks, we have proven expertise you can count on. We have over a decade of experience manufacturing and supporting crucial software frameworks that power large applications deployed by thousands of customers. Syncfusion is widely acknowledged as an expert on the Microsoft platform. Our technical teams have deep expertise in this area, often resolving extremely challenging technical issues.

Syncfusion publishes the popular Succinctly series of technical e-books that are seen as the gold standard for learning even the most challenging technical topics. Syncfusions user e xperience team does groundbreaking work on the design of fluent user experiences. We encourage you to take a look at our widely popular Metro Studio application as an example of what our user experience team is capable of delivering. Syncfusions solutions team can build your enterprise software applications in as little as 20% of the time it would normally take other developers. With Syncfusion, there is absolutely no discovery on your dime. You will be able to deliver solutions that perform well in a fraction of the time it takes with competing providers. Isnt it time that you co nsidered Syncfusion to build your software? Call us today and regain control of your software development costs and results. Please contact sales@syncfusion.com or call 1.888.9DOTNET.