RatchetSoft Blog

Ratchet-X and conflicts with keyboard shortcut applications

2012-01-05T11:29:00.000-05:00

Ratchet-X is highly unintrusive in terms of its impact at the desktop. However, there are instances when it may conflict with other applications (usually utilities), that work with the keyboard buffer. An example of such an application is PhraseExpress from Bartels Media GmbH. This very useful utility allows the user to create global keyboard shortcuts that when typed, are replaced with a larger phrase thus reducing typing and ensuring textual consistency. In order to do this, the application must monitor what the user is typing into every application at the desktop, perform a recognition, eat the shortcut keystrokes when entered and replace it with the mapped long form text from its database. While this would not normally cause a conflict with Ratchet-X, if your action makes heavy use of stuffing keys in the keyboard buffer or your regwin hosts a conflicting keyboard shortcut, a conflict may arise. If an action does not seem to be doing what it is supposed to do or is exhibiting odd behavior and your action or regwin uses the keyboard buffer or shortcuts, check to see if the user is running a utility that intercepts keystrokes. This might save you some action debugging time.

Ratchet-X Jump2 - Jump Anywhere

2011-04-13T10:46:00.002-05:00

Have you heard about Ratchet-X Jump2? Ratchet-X Jump2 is a new, low-cost offering from RatchetSoft that allows you to add simple, yet critically important and pervasively needed features to your existing applications. Ratchet-X Jump2 allows you to extend the context of the entity you are working within an application by enabling you to jump” to the same context in another application. For example, let’s say you’re looking at a customer record in your CRM system and you want to see all the related documents for the same customer in your document management system. Ratchet-X Jump2 allows you to add that functionality quickly, easily and at a fraction of the price it would cost to enable this feature using the full-featured version of Ratchet-X.

To learn more about Ratchet-X Jump2, which was recently announced at the annual AIIM conference, click here.

Ratchet-X Version 5 Released. And There Was Much Rejoicing!

2011-01-05T23:53:00.006-05:00

Drum roll please......After 9 long months of development and testing, we're proud to announce the official release of Ratchet-X, Version 5. While our existing customers have been banging on some of these new features for a while, this is the first time we've been able to roll out all these improvements in one major release. And we're quite excited about it!

Besides a plethora of new features, we've streamlined the code in a major way. By stripping out tens of thousands of lines of code and depreciating infrequently used features, we were able to improve runtime performance and focus our precious resources on the features our users say they love most. Needless to say, our developers are happy and take great joy in telling Marketing how wrong they were in pushing for some of these "must have" deprecated features.

For more information on the release, check out our new web site at www.ratchetsoft.com. Better yet, if you want to see the product in action, download it today at http://ratchetsoft.com/html/downloadform.html.

Thanks again, and as always, please don’t hesitate to let us know what you think of the product.

See you at IASA

2010-06-02T08:29:00.002-05:00

Sunday marks the start of the IASA National Educational Conference and RatchetSoft is proud to be a sponsor of this year's show. Come see us at booth #609 and get a demo of the latest and greatest in desktop application integration. We'll be showing a series of new integrations and automations along with some old favorites.

Also, don't forget to ask us about the new and exciting RatchetSoft releases due out this fall.

Looking forward to seeing you in Grapevine, TX.

How Does A Ratchet Work?

2010-05-12T22:01:00.000-05:00

One of the downsides of working for a company named RatchetSoft is the inordinate amount of click-throughs we get on our website for the search phrase; “How does a ratchet work”. I realize it’s because we have a page on the site entitled; “How Does Ratchet-X Work?”, but I’m still amazed at the number of people that pose the question, and based on the search snippet returned, still think it’s relevant and click through. It’s kind of funny.

Calling All MGAs To Orlando...

2010-03-12T16:03:00.004-05:00

If you are planning to attend the AAMGA Automation and Technology Conference the week of March 14th in Orlando, please make sure you stop at booth #29 and say hello.

We will be demoing several interesting Ratchet-X integrations including ACORD forms integration and Ratchet-X for ImageRight. Every day more and more agents, brokers, MGAs and carriers are adopting Ratchet-X as the tool of choice to solve their desktop integration challenges.

So stop by and find out how putting a Ratchet-X magic button in your applications will dramatically increase your productivity and reduce data entry errors.

Hope to see you at the show.

2009-11-23T11:52:00.001-05:00

Thank you to all who visited our booth at the IASA Northeast Regional Conference last week. The reception was quite good as we were demonstrating both Ratchet-X for ImageRight and our ACORD forms integration plug-in. Folks had lots of questions across a number of fronts though there seemed to be a particular interest in Ratchet-X uses in the areas of corporate and government compliance. As I’ve written about extensively on this blog and in other places, Ratchet-X is a wonderful addition to any organization’s compliance program. Ratchet-X can be used in the following ways:

- enforce new regulations and policies not built into your application
- create helpful dynamic links to external sources of information
- dramatically expand your ability to track user/application interactions for the purposes of auditing and corrective actions

If you are interested in discussing how Ratchet-X can assist with your compliance program, give us a call. Further, fell free to view the following video which touches on the compliance use case.

Ratchet-X For ImageRight Plug-In Video

2009-10-27T09:05:00.002-05:00

Ratchet-X for ImageRight was released at the Vertafore/ImageRight User Conference back in August. We finally got around to creating a demo video of the plug-in and have posted as Ratchet-X Video Series video. If you’re interested in viewing the demo video, click here.

Ratchet-X for ImageRight is compatible with all version 3.5 and higher of ImageRight and is available from Vertafore. You can contact us or Vertafore for more details.

ImageRight User Conference Follow-up

2009-09-08T14:23:00.002-05:00

Thank you to all who visited the Ratchet-X booth at the ImageRight User Group Conference. The tremendous response we received at the conference further confirms our belief that Ratchet-X and document management are beautiful match.

We announced at the conference the official release of Ratchet-X for ImageRight. If you’re an ImageRight user and have been deferring on integrating more of your applications because of the integration costs, I recommend you give us a call and check out the new release. Ratchet-X for ImageRight is compatible ImageRight versions 3.5 and above.

Special thanks to George Weihs for performing a yeoman’s job and pulling double duty in the booth.

Ratchet-X and ETL

2009-05-28T14:34:00.005-05:00

We recently exhibited Ratchet-X at Microsoft’s TechEd 2009 show in Los Angeles California. Thank you to all who visited our booth and made the show such a big success for us. While there was no shortage of ideas as to how Ratchet-X could be used within the organizations of those who took the time to receive a demo, there was one repeated use case that stood out. Let’s just say that despite all efforts the industry has made to create better integrated systems, ETL (Extract, Transform and Load), is alive and well. We heard a number of stories about how organizations still continue to struggle with creating and maintaining reliable ETL processes.

No doubt, modern application development and deployment technologies coupled with “smart” infrastructure are enabling organizations to integrate more-and-more systems in real time. However, despite the advances, ETL is still a reality of life in organizations of all sizes. So the question asked often asked of us at the show was; “Where does Ratchet-X fit within the ETL process?” Glad you asked.

Let me first say that while Ratchet-X does extract, transform and load data between systems, it is not a traditional ETL tool. When I think about ETL, I think of scheduled batch jobs that process and move data between queues and systems. Generally, ETL processes are executed during non-prime time usage or maintenance hours for the purpose synching data across systems. While the term ETL can be used to describe other related processes, I think this is what most folks mean when they refer to ETL.

So, if Ratchet-X extracts, transforms and loads data, why isn’t it an ETL tool? It’s mostly a matter of perspective. Whereas most ETL processes are scheduled to run in batch, work with large data sets and have little end-user interaction, Ratchet-X is an on demand data processing platform that processes a single record set at a time and is often guided by the end-user.

Most of our customers use Ratchet-X to add new features to existing applications without changing those applications in any way. These new features usually involve:

Acquiring data from an external source (e.g. web services, web site, electronic form, database, API, etc).
Sending application screen data to an external source.
Processing application screen data for the purposes of either transforming it in some way or kicking off a down stream process.

In most cases, Ratchet-X is processing one or more application screen’s worth of data that collectively constitutes a single record set (i.e. a composite customer record, an insurance policy, a shipping manifest, etc.). Ratchet-X is not usually used to process thousands of these record sets at a time. Further, Ratchet-X is almost always used under the watchful eye of the end-user. In reality, Ratchet-X is an “assistive” technology that allows an end-user to acquire, push or process data to and from the systems they use without having to rekey data and reducing errors. This doesn’t sound like ETL to me.

So, uh, where is it that Ratchet-X fits into the ETL process? Oh yeah. No ETL process is perfect. In fact most ETL processes have an error handling stage where exceptions and records that fail validation are kicked out to an exceptions queue. Once in the queue, the user then must manually review and rekey the corrected information into the target system or error handling interface. This is precisely where Ratchet-X can be very useful. For example, we have customers that set up Ratchet-X’s task list as the exception handling queue so users can easily review the data, make whatever corrections are necessary and immediately paste the corrected record into the target application.

So while Ratchet-X is not an ETL tool per se, it can serve as an important part of the error handling stage of most ETL implementations. If you have any questions or comments regarding how Ratchet-X can be used to supplement your ETL process, please drop us a line. We’d love to hear from you.

If you'd like to see a video regarding how Ratchet-X can be used as part of your ETL efforts, click here.

SOA Dead...Again?

2009-01-06T11:33:00.004-05:00

The Death of SOA…again? How many times have I read this headline? I thought it died back in 2006 when it was mortally wounded and replaced by Web 2.0…which then, according to the pundits, itself perished in Spring 2008. It’s so hard to keep this stuff straight. The good news is you don’t really have to.

While the media is replete with proclamations about the state of technology movements and buzzwords, discussions such as these are merely academic. Why is this? It has a lot to do with the media’s lack of nuance. To those who opine on such matters, attention spans are short so often something is either in or out, big or small, paramount or irrelevant. Fortunately, that’s not the way the real world works.

I agree with Burton Analyst Anne Thomas Manes’ summation that services is where it’s at. I’ve always held that belief. I was highly suspicious when discussions of web services gave way to SOA because the conversation transitioned from a compact and tangible concept to a much larger and nebulous concept. Read achievable versus hard to achieve.

When companies turned their attention to the broader idea of SOA, the appeal of project-based implementations and small wins went out the window. SOA became a religion that organizations had to strategically adopt from the start otherwise its benefits were not to be had. I strongly disagree. While most organizations would love to strategically embrace SOA from day one and experience “spectacular gains”, in most cases it’s not a practical approach. Small implementations, lessons learned, quick wins and replication is a much more sensible path. Over time, as success builds upon success, services ultimately become the way business functions are exposed by an organization. Along with it come the registries, management and scaling layers required for broader success. Dare I say, these services and the methodologies used to design, develop and deploy them ultimately become strategic? I'll buy that.

So if we’re bidding the term SOA a fond adieu, so be it. What’s in a name? But let’s go easy on the “SOA is Dead” and “…great failed experiment” language. The more these kinds of terms are thrown around, the more they stick with decision makers and are used against those fighting the good fight to implement services.

Quick Copy: Simple Elegance

2008-10-06T21:51:00.004-05:00

The more full-featured Ratchet-X becomes, the more tempted we are to unduly emphasize the product's more “cool and complicated” features during demos. Now I’m not saying these features are not useful. No doubt they are or we wouldn’t have funded their development in the first place. However, this emphasis on the WOW features sometimes causes us to gloss over some of the other more mundane, yet equally as valuable features.

For example, have you ever used Ratchet-X to move data from one screen to another? While we spend a lot of time talking about integrating existing application screens with external data sources, we tend to down play the simple screen-to-screen copy feature. That’s unfortunate because virtually every Ratchet-X user indentifies this as a need, and yet we tend to demo this feature only after being asked.

So, for all of you who constantly enter data into multiple screens either for data entry purposes or launching queries in other desktop systems, I recommend you give the Quick Copy feature a look. Quick Copy is a simple feature that allows you to link fields on multiple screens so that data can flow between these screens in either direction. Simple, but pretty powerful when it comes to speeind up those pesky repetitive typing tasks.

Check Quick Copy when you get a chance. Better yet, give me a call and I’ll demo it for you.

Ratchet-X and Application Rationalization

2008-07-30T10:31:00.001-05:00

Over the past two years or so, a number of consulting organizations have added “Application Rationalization” to their roster of services. Simply stated, application rationalization is the process by which an organization assesses its portfolio of application software and decides which applications need to be maintained, sunset or replaced. While this process may look different from organization-to-organization, the common goal is to reduce application bloat and functional redundancy thereby reducing overall IT cost.

Ratchet-X can be a very helpful tool during the application rationalization process. Often, applications are kept in production because they provide some functionality that can’t be added to a preferred system. Ratchet-X allows organizations to add or integrate that functionality into the preferred system quickly and easily thus allowing the redundant system to be sunset. Further, the rationalization process uncovers a slew of integration code and cron jobs that shuttles data between systems. Ratchet-X can help alleviate this web of spaghetti code by allowing organizations to deliver information normally moved in batch, to applications in real time at the point of need.

So, if you’re engaged in or considering undertaking an application rationalization project, keep Ratchet-X in mind as you evaluate system consolidation.

Document Enable Any Application With Ratchet-X

2008-05-30T08:55:00.003-05:00

I recently received an email from a customer saying; “I’m amazed at how many places within our organization we’ve applied Ratchet-X beyond the original project.” We hear this all the time. Although I often make this point during customer presentations, it usually doesn’t set in until the customer lives and uses Ratchet-X for a bit.

One example where Ratchet-X is repeatedly applied beyond the original customer project is in the area of enterprise document management (EDM). Once customers realize that Ratchet-X is actually a piece of desktop middleware that brokers a “conversation” between application screen data and external data sources (and not merely an integration tool purchased to solve a specific problem), integrating applications into the customer’s EDM system is a natural fit.

Ratchet-X is now commonly being used as a way to both submit documents to, and retrieve data from, EDM repositories. On the capture side, Ratchet-X works best with images and forms since the information used for indexing the documents is often available in the integrated application screen. With regard to document retrieval, pretty much every application user can benefit by an onboard ability to instantly link to documents that relate to the entity referenced by the application screen data. Since Ratchet-X enables more applications, and by extension users, to leverage the EDM, the costs associated with purchasing and maintaining the EDM is justified over a much larger pool of users.

Not many products can claim they dramatically impact the ROI of the other products running within the organization. So try integrating Ratchet-X with your EDM back-end and let me know how it goes. Also be on the lookout for the release of Ratchet-X plugins that integrate into the industry’s most popular EDM products. If you’re thinking of doing such an integration, make sure you check with us to see if we have a plug-in for your EDM in the pipeline.

Twitter - I Just Don't Get It! Never Did, Never Will.

2008-05-07T21:30:00.008-05:00

I know this has little to do with the purpose of this blog but I can't take it anymore. Today, I had yet another associate of mine invite me to track his every movement on Twitter. This comes just one day after telling another colleague that I refused to communicate with him exclusively through Pownce.

Does anyone over the age of 18 really need to know at this moment which friend is picking the nuts out of his teeth from the Snickers bar he just ate? The only reason I know it was a Snickers bar is because I received an urgent alert to that fact five minutes prior as he was unwrapping said Snickers bar.

Just because we have the technical ability to transmit every fleeting thought and the undertaking of every mundane task doesn't mean we should. But what do I know, I'm just a cranky old geezer with a little less time on my hands than some.

If you're connected to me via Twitter, you probably know that already.

What's New in Ratchet-X Version 3.5?

2008-05-05T10:48:00.006-05:00

Good news for RatchetSoft users! Ratchet-X version 3.5 was released to the Ratchet-X Community last week. Here’s a review of what’s new.

Assembles
The most significant change in version 3.5 is the introduction of Assembles. While Ratchet-X has always had the ability to extract, paste and manage datasets that scan multiple applications and application screens, version 3.5 shifts the responsibility of supporting this feature from the plug-in developer to the appspace creator and the platform itself. As part of our ongoing effort to focus the platform on managing desktop data rather than mere application automation, we felt that multiple application and screen support should be something that the plug-in creator inherits rather than have to specifically plan for. This supports the philosophy of loosely coupling applications and data sources.

So now, if a plug-in requires data from an xmodel that spans multiple screens, it’s up to the appspace developer (the only person who really knows this to be the case for a particular application integration), to define that fact by instructing the Commander to create an assemble in the task list when the user executes the associated plug-in. Once the assemble is in the task list, it becomes much easier to be repurposed to other applications and sources. For more on assembles, check out the Ratchet-X documentation.

Macro Throttling
Appspace macros are created by the appspace author. This being the case, defined macro execution speed is usually based on the performance the appspace creator sees on his/her desktop. However, once the appspace is deployed, the macro’s execution speed may need to be altered to accommodate the performance of an end user’s workstation. This is the purpose for macro throttling. Macro throttling allows each individual end user to globally speed up or slow down the performance of macros executed on his or her desktop (five levels of throttling).

AutoSave/AutoBackup
In version 3.5, the Appspace Editor has both an AutoSave and AutoBackup feature. When Appspace Editor saves, it makes a backup of the previous version. Further, once you save an appspace for the first time, Appspace Editor will autosave a copy of your appspace based on a user defined autosave time interval.

In addition, there have been various changes to the the connector API and plug-in API to accommodate changes to the task list and assembles.

If you have any questions or comments regarding the new version, please gives us a call or drop me an email. Good luck with version 3.5 of Ratchet-X!

The Evolving Role of Organizational IT

2008-04-02T09:25:00.002-05:00

I recently read two blog postings that touched on the future of organizational IT with regard to the rollout of new technology. The first entry encapsulated the view of venture capitalist Kevin Efrusy of Accel Partners. Kevin’s take is he is increasingly seeing technology sold directly to end users – the folks who pay for and receive the benefit from new technology. In fact, he’s putting his money where his mouth is by funding companies that deliver solutions users can find, buy and implement (or at least pilot), on their own.

The second posting was from Jeremy Geelan covering an interview he did with Rod Smith from IBM. Based on the posting title, the posting was supposed to be about IBM’s SMASH (secured mashups) project. However, the focus quickly switched to the concept of user empowerment. The idea being that organizations have pockets of non-technical users who are constantly looking for new technologies that can help them become more productive. He calls this group “shadow IT”. Cool name. No doubt, the concept of mashup and situational applications plays directly into the hands of these groups.

I strongly agree with both gentlemen’s sentiments. In fact, we see it ourselves everyday. While we spend a lot of time speaking with IT folks about how Ratchet-X can help an organization integrate the unintegratable, increasingly, we are brought into organizations by the end users who will directly benefit from a Ratchet-X implementation. Overall, I think greater user involvement in finding, evaluating and even piloting technologies is a good think. However, where there is opportunity, there is danger. While these user groups have the best of intentions in mind when seeking a solution, their views are often myopic and skewed towards their specific needs. This is totally understandable. Salesman are looking for tools that help them sell more, faster and better. They’re not in the business of worrying about what the folks in Accounting need. Nor should they be, that’s not their job. However, if they are bringing new technology into an organization, someone has to think about scale, integration, support and maintenance. This IT’s job.

IT’s role is changing in that in the past, requirements were developed and a solution was devised, products selected and rolled-out. Today, IT is often not hearing about these solutions until they’ve been piloted by shadow IT. Operating in this environment requires a shift in focus from deciding and selecting to sheparding and shaping. While IT does not want to discourage the valuable service shadow IT provides, it can’t let the process run amuck. IT must keep its head in the game and make sure these situational solutions are coordinated so they can be integrated and managed effectively. I often hear folks talk about a day when it won’t matter what disparate groups bring into the organization because everything will “just talk to each other through XML”. OK, when that day gets here, I’m all for it. However, until then, IT will needs to recognize its evolving role from systems dictator to user educator, guide and occasionally, bouncer.

Is Web 2.0 A Disaster?

2008-02-12T11:48:00.001-05:00

I received my daily CIO Insight Quick Facts email today and was sucked in by the provocative subject line; “Is Web 2.0 A Disaster?” However, when I clicked the embedded link, the “disaster” trumpeted in the headline had quickly been downgraded to; “Web 2.0: To Good To Be True?” Note to editor…these two statements are not semantically the same. Regardless, the marketing ploy worked because I was compelled to read further.

The article opens with a Basex claim stating collaborative tools are costing businesses over a half a trillion dollars in lost productivity due to worker information overload. I didn’t read the actual Basex report (because it cost $199), so I can’t say for sure this number is hogwash but…

If companies are truly experiencing these kinds of losses due to too much information, I need to shift RatchetSoft’s focus and become a knowledge management and collaboration consulting company because the market opportunity is apparently huge. Information overload is rarely the fault of the technologies that deliver the information. It’s usually the fault of one or more of the following:

1) The group asking for the information doesn’t really know what they need. Looking for a needle in a haystack assumes you know what a haystack and needle looks like.

2) The collaboration solution is not implemented properly. Opening up the spigot and letting the data flow is just the easy part of knowledge management and collaboration. Filtering it for relevancy and making available at the right time is the hard part.

3) The information itself is of poor quality. Garbage in, garbage out.

Then the article moved on to the issue of security.

“Corporate executives also worry that Web 2.0 tools pose a security threat. Fifty-two percent of 472 executives say securing and protecting sensitive data was the top barrier to adopting the tools, according to a January poll by the Economist Intelligence Unit, a research and advisory firm, for business consultancy KPMG.

Is this news top anyone? In fact, the real news here is that only 52% of these executives see security an adoption barrier. Web 2.0 is no different than any other technology that involves information. Security has been, or at least should have been, a barrier to the adoption of every technology since the invention of the network. Bottom line is security good, hacking threats, bad, very bad. We get it. Nothing specific here to Web 2.0.

Finally, despite all the doom and gloom, the article concludes with some good news for Web 2.0:

“Three of four executives said they believe collaborative tools will foster innovation in their companies. And almost 70 percent agreed that Web 2.0 will help their people work more efficiently.”

So 70% of the respondents agreed that the half a trillion dollar loss in productivity is worth the increases in innovation? Uh, OK.

I read these kinds of articles all the time (maybe I need to get out more), and often come away asking myself; “What did I just really learn?” I’m not sure because it’s hard to decipher true insight amongst the headline hyperbole, contradictory statistics and often obvious observations by pundits. Dare I say there’s too much unfiltered information coming in. Hey, maybe there’s something to this.

SOA and Enterprise Mashups - Work On Your Pitch

2008-01-29T14:54:00.001-05:00

I read an article today on SeachSOA.com entitled; “Enterprise Mashups, SOA’s Killer App?” While I totally agree with the sentiment of the article (that business users could care less about SOA), I’m a bit surprised that this is a revelation to anyone. The bottom line is business users don’t care about technology for technology’s sake. They only care about the relevant and tangible solutions a technology delivers. And while we technologists know how SOA translates into shorter times to value and more agile systems, business users don’t want to hear pie in the sky promises. They want to see quick and powerful results.

Regardless of whether it’s ultimately enterprise mashups or some other by product of SOA, it’s incumbent upon those who introduce new technologies into an organization to be smart marketers. As smart marketers of technology, we should keep the following points in mind when trying to secure business user buy in:

1) Know your audience. All too often, technologists get caught up in the technical details that turn themselves on yet forget about the wants, desires and needs of the person whose appetite they seek to whet. The CFO and data entry manager have very different views of the world. Be mindful of these differences and tailor your pitch accordingly.

2) Sell Specific Benefits. While we technologies love to extol the virtues of agile systems and straight through processing, business people’s eyes tend to glaze over when we use such general terms. Find out what’s important to them and then discuss the technology within that context.

3) Don’t Oversell. Business users are a pretty skeptical bunch. They’ve been sold a bill of goods before and have been left holding the bag. SOA and enterprise mashups are pretty powerful concepts that don’t require hyperbole to get others excited as well. Keep your pitch relevant, specific and on point and the rest will follow. Don’t flip the Bozo bit.

Common sense, yes. Commonly performed practice by technologists…not so much.

When I first learned about SOA, it reminded of the first time I learned about ODBC (Open Database Connectivity). I thought to myself that embedding in my applications and reports the ability to hit virtually any data source regardless of vendor or platform was going to be a game changer for business users. However, I also knew that merely telling them about a software driver that enabled a programmer to access multiple databases via native programming language access calls would be greeted with cricket calls. The best way to generate enthusiasm was to show them the power of ODBC from within the report writers and Excel spreadsheets they already used. It’s one thing to tell a business user what a given technology will do for them, it’s another thing entirely when you can show them.

I remember one business manager saying to me after a demo; “…so you’re saying this ODBC thing allows me to run a report that accesses our daily sales from the field and inventory levels in our warehouse in real time using the tools I already know instead of waiting for a weekly download and import. WOW!”.

SOA and enterprise mashups in one form or another will represent one of these WOW moments for business users if we present them in terms they understand and within a relevant and important context.

Integrating Ratchet-X With Other Mashup Tools (Microsoft Popfly, Yahoo Pipes, etc.)

2008-01-18T10:50:00.000-05:00

We received a question on our support forum today that had to do with integrating Ratchet-X with other mashup tools such as Microsoft Popfly, Yahoo Pipes and others. Since we received this question a number of times before, I thought it wise to blog about this topic in some detail.

The first logical question one should ask is; “Why in the world would I want to integrate mashups that I create using other tools with Ratchet-X? Isn’t Ratchet-X a competing mashup tool?"

Let me address the second question first. There is no doubt that based on the broad definition of mashup, Ratchet-X can also be considered a mashup tool. I certainly believe this opinion and reflect it in the way we promote Ratchet-X. However, it is not a mashup tool in nearly the same sense that the aforementioned tools are. You use Popfly and Yahoo Pipes to create “new” applications from existing mashups, services and function parts. The end result is a rapidly created new user interface tailored to the specific needs of the user. That’s great! That’s not what Ratchet-X does. Ratchet-X enables users to mash existing services and function parts into existing applications without having to create a new or alternative user interface. That’s the whole point of the product. We believe that while there is a significant market brewing for mashup tools that empower developers and users to rapidly create new applications from existing stuff, we also believe the vast majority of the world wants functionality mashed into the applications they already use – their systems of record so to speak. Given this premise, we do not compete with other mashup development platforms. In fact, we compliment them. This leads me to answering the first question regarding why one would integrate mashups with Ratchet-X.

This question is answered in two parts. The first part is easy. Once you create a mashup using any one of these mashup development tools, in the end, it is still an application like any other. This application has a user interface, performs its function and is static. So as the users' needs change, the mashup must either be modified or cloned and modified to accommodate these new requirements. If the user of the mashup is also the mashup author or has the prerequisite skills to make the changes, great! The changes should be made directly to the mashup.

However, there are two issues of concern. The first being you can see how this can quickly run amok as the number of versions and permutations of versions grows – along with the support headaches. Second, I believe the vast majority of end users using mashups for the foreseeable future will not have the skills required to modify the mashup to accommodate their changing needs. If this is the case, users are left fending for themselves waiting for IT resources to free up and get to their project. How many developers place modifying existing code as a high priority item? Not many. I certainly wouldn’t.

So the user now has an application that needs to have functionality added to it and they do not have the skills or the stomach to modify the application. Well, that’s why we created Ratchet-X. This use case is no different for a mashup application then it is for any other application. Create the appspace, define the regwins and snippets and link to xmodels.

The second scenario is a little more interesting. Say I create a Popfly mashup that returns data that I’d like to integrate into an existing application. Can I use Ratchet-X to get the data out of the mashup interface and into my application of record? Absolutely! All you need to do is create an appspace that profiles both the Popfly results screen and the system of record data entry screen and run the results through Commander’s Task List. Here’s a simple example. Let’s say I create a Popfly mashup that returns a detailed stock quote for a ticker symbol. Assuming I’ve created the appspace described above, when the Popfly results screen is displayed, I can tell Commander to copy the data to Commander’s task list. I can then go to the task that contains the data in the task list and paste it into the system of record screen. In two clicks, I’ve moved the data from Popfly to my other application. And the best part about it is that neither application has any idea that it just exchanged data with other. That’s pretty neat!

Semantic Coding - Whose Job Is It?

2008-01-09T09:28:00.000-05:00

Pete Warden covered Ratchet-X on his blog this week. While Ratchet-X was prominently featured, the real thrust of his posting has to do with the semantic coding of content and screen scraping. I think Pete’s most salient point is the following:

“The promise of the semantic web is that it will allow your computer to understand the data on a web page, so you can search, analyze and display it in different forms. The top-down approach is to ask web-site creators to add information about the data on a page. I can't see this ever working, it just takes too much time for almost no reward to the publisher.”

I strongly agree with this point. Publishers will only code their content and services with metadata if there’s something in it for them. Unfortunately for most publishers, the rewards are not commensurate with the effort. And for those willing to put in the effort, what semantic schemes should they use?

At RatchetSoft, we break the semantic issue down into two bases components; access and meaning. Ratchet-X goes a long way in solving the “access” issue by creating a user-focused method for accessing data sources by leveraging established accessibility standards (MSAA and MUIA). These methods are much more reliable and stable than traditional screen scraping techniques.
The “meaning” issue is a bit more challenging. On that front, we shift the semantic coding responsibility to the entity that actually reaps the benefit of supplying the semantic metadata. So, if you’re a user that wants to add new features to existing application screens, you have a vested interest in supplying metadata about those screens and data sources so they can be processed by external services. If you are a publisher who has a financial interest in exposing data in new ways to increase consumption of data, you have a strong motivation to semantically code your information.

While I’d love to see broad adoption of one semantic scheme, I don’t see this happening any time soon. This is why our Ratchet-X product not only allows plug-in authors to supply metadata about their content (via xmodels), we also allow end users to supply metadata about the data sources they frequently use. While allowing both publishers and consumers to supply metadata about data sources poses some potential conflict and duplication related risks, it also allows us to shift the responsibility of coding to the party that receives the benefit.

SOA Lifecycle

2007-12-28T18:13:00.000-05:00

I read an article today on SearchSOA that was a pretty comprehensive review of the SOA Lifecycle. While I’ll be the first to admit that alot of ink was dedicated to concepts that are seemingly common sense, there are several salient points worth noting in this article.

The first point of note has to do with SOA governance. Since an SOA is ultimately a portfolio of business capabilities (some specific to your organization, some external to your organization), governance becomes more important than ever. Back in 2001, I wrote an article for PerfectXML.com that delved into the nascent domain of SOA management and governance. The idea is simple, the more assets you reuse and the more services you incorporate into your applications that are not under your direct control, the more important governance becomes. While the promise of increased reuse coupled with shortened “time to application” periods are very attractive propsects, there is a price to be paid in terms of application reliability and stability. When there is a problem, which service is as fault? Who is responsible for fixing the problem? Proper attention to infrastructure and portfolio governance is the only way to help ensure that your SOA is ready for prime time. Implementing an SOA without a well structured governance layer is a formula for disaster.

The second noteworthy point relates to the focus on service consumption as pointed out by Forrester’s Randy Heffner. His following comment are words architects should live by.

"Focusing first on consumption puts you in the proper mind set for doing SOA because that should be the default approach," Heffner said. "It puts you in the mindset of first achieving reuse."

Your SOA only has value if it makes available services people need and presented in a consumable form (like a Ratchet-X plug-in – shameless plug). When I was a developer, we used to start our project discovery process by asking users what kind of reports they needed. The idea being that you first find out what information users need and what they plan to do with it before you worry about features and screens. Heffner’s comment is an SOA-updated version to that approach. Find out what people need and how they need it presented before you focus on service design.

The last important part of the piece pertains to Dana Gardner’s comment regarding shortening the lifecycle period. Unlike traditional applications, SOAs are living, breathing and most importantly, dynamic organisms that are subject to frequent refresh by design and necessity. Dana’s following comment is important to keep in mind when managing your SOA.

"Your services are going to be dynamic, so you're going to want to have a fairly frequent refresh or replacement of specific services based on requirements," Gardner explained. "At a higher level of abstraction, you're going to have changing business processes that those services support because you're going to want to adjust and amend on a fairly rapid basis for efficiencies. You're going to want to give more people who are close to that business process some say in how that process can be amended and improved iteratively over time."

I Gotta Be Me...

2007-12-27T17:25:00.000-05:00

I guess year end is the time to “spring clean” one’s virtual identity. Over the past week, I’ve gotten a barrage of emails inviting me to various social networking sites to verify that I know someone, befriend someone else, or simply update my contact information. Plaxo tells me everyone is doing it this time of year so it must be true.

The point is this, while I’m happy to verify, befriend, endorse and vouch, I do resent having to create and maintain multiple online identities. I’m not a teenager who winds away the hours online interacting with the rest of the world via the persona that suits my particular mood at any one time. I have one identity, one brand if you will, and that’s all I want to maintain regardless with whom I’m interacting. Sure, I want a way to segment that identity so my business associates need not concern themselves with what side dish I’m bringing to mom’s for Christmas dinner, but all-in-all, I want one place to manage my online identity.

This problem first became apparent to me back in the day when I would repeatedly enter my address, date of birth, payment credentials and other personal information into almost every website I visited. I thought to myself, shouldn’t the web be the one place where I shouldn’t have to re-key data over and over again? This is why I was a big fan of Microsoft’s Passport (now Windows LiveID) and Hailstorm initiatives. The “one me, one identity” concept was quite appealing. Now we can debate whether Microsoft as a company or their identity management plan was right for the task (I personally have no problem with Microsoft fulfilling this role considering their software drvies my computers, mobile phone and game console), but the bottom line is I shouldn’t have to maintain a different set of credentials everywhere I go. Could you imagine having to maintain a different license for every state you drive through or a different credit card for every store and restaurant you visit?

Now Google is trying to fill the void with Google OpenSocial and Google Profiles. While the information tracked by these services is initially pretty basic, it’s easy to see where this can go. I for one am happy to see this development and hope it happens. Why Google is any less “frightening” now than Microsoft was back in 2001 is a bit beyond me but I guess a lot has happened since then. Be it the acceptance of the software as a service concept, more sophisticated security and fraud detection systems and the explosion of social networking, now might be the right time to finally implement the unified identity concept. Let’s hope so.

Do You Want Auto Updates of Acquired Data?

2007-12-20T11:27:00.000-05:00

When pitching Ratchet-X, I’m often asked the following question; “Once I paste data into an application screen, will that screen be updated if the data changes at the source?” Currently, the answer is no. But there’s no reason it couldn’t assuming this is truly what customers want and are willing to accept the manner in which we can do it. Allow me to lay out the issue below and I welcome your feedback regarding this concept.

Currently, after data is pasted by Ratchet-X into an application screen, the data is “disconnected” from the source. This means if the data changes at the source, your application data will not reflect the change. Why is this? It’s because Ratchet-X is currently only aware of the data that is actively available on the desktop. In other words, the only data Ratchet-X knows of is the data that resides on application screens to which you’ve navigated and currently have open. While Ratchet-X does have an existing mechanism to automatically query this active data and perform a refresh, it doesn’t have a way of refreshing data that it has previously acquired.

Based on customer demand, we expanded Commander’s Clipboard function and renamed it the Commander Task List. One of the new task list features is the ability to export data to disk so it can be reused at a later date. Well, what if we were to expand this feature so that data that passes through the task list (which includes all the data that is pasted), is automatically saved on a server. Once that data is stored on a server, it then becomes a discrete data object that can be have a number of functions performed upon it independent of the application that requested or houses it. One of these functions could be source monitoring for the purpose performing data updates.

Let’s look at the following example. Imagine you’ve just pasted a credit rating for a customer into your accounting system. Currently, that rating will not be updated until you explicitly navigate back to that customer’s record and ask Ratchet-X to refresh the data from the source.

However, we can expand Commander so that it stores the pasted credit rating on a server and be given an instruction to monitor the credit source on a monthly basis and notify you when the rating changes. When it does, you will be notified within Commander at which point you can elect to go to that company’s record in the accounting system and paste the updated credit rating.

At the end of the day, this data is your data. Whose server should it live on? What functions can be performed upon it? How often? At what cost? At RatchetSoft, we recognize that information is one of an organization’s most critical assets so we are vigilant about allowing only the owner to control its flow. However, as customers look at Ratchet-X as being more about structured data trafficking and less about cutting and pasting, we get bombarded with these kinds of advanced data processing requests.

Is this a feature you’d like? Should it be a priority? What do you think? If you have an opinion, leave a comment or send us an email at info@ratchetsoft.com. I look forward to hearing from you.

Originate or Replicate Data?

2007-12-20T09:53:00.000-05:00

Ratchet-X is an innovative technology that allows people to transform existing Windows and browser-based applications into mashups. I’m often asked by customers, when data from these external sources is mashed in, should it be replicated in that application’s storage of record? The answer is…it all depends. If you are querying external sources for the purposes of compiling a composite view of an “entity” to make a decision, the answer is probably not. However, if you're querying the external sources as part of a data entry task where the acquired information needs to become part of the software you’re using, the answer is unequivocally, yes.

Here are some simple guidelines we use when advising customers regarding the “originate or replicate” issue. Replicating external data is recommended when any combination of the following conditions is true:

1) The performance (speed and availability), of the external sources is unreliable – get the data while you can.

2) The data acquired needs to be part of the system to support backend reporting functions. Downstream functions such as reporting will not have access to the data you’ve mashed in through Ratchet-X unless you replicate the data.

3) The source data is not prone to frequent change.

4) There is a “per access” fee to access the data at the source. However, if the data is subject to frequent change (like a stock price), you may be forced to absorb the fee in exchange for timeliness.

Conversely, if these conditions do not apply, then we encourage you to access the data from the source on demand.

Ratchet-X and Windows Vista

2007-12-05T09:24:00.000-05:00

We've recently received a flurry of questions regarding Ratchet-X support for Windows Vista. Here's the current status. Ratchet-X does work under Vista in terms of recognizing screens, extracting and pasting data. The current issue we have is that the alert button (the button that appears in your integrated application's title bar), does not render properly under Vista. While we can implement a quick fix, since only 2% of our site's visitors and downloaders are Vista users, we've decided to take this opportunity and bite the bullet on a bigger issue we've been deferring for some time."

We've had a number of users express a preference for the alert button being "appended" to the integrated application window rather than inserted it into the title bar. If you've ever used WebEx or GoToMeeting and with an IM package, you've seen this technique employed. So, based on these preferences and the Vista rendering issue, we've decided to tackle the problem in one fell swoop.

This being the case, we anticipate certifying Ratchet-X for Windows Vista in early 2008 (Q1). If you have any questions or comments, as always, don't hesitate to contact us or post a comment here.

Taking the Complexity out of Compliance

2007-11-02T15:09:00.000-05:00

There is a lot of talk these days about compliance, corporate governance and transparency.

Go to any publicly traded company web site, click a link for “investor relations,” and you’ll probably see another link for “corporate governance” or the like. And there you’ll find the lofty prose and high-sounding platitudes about how the “leadership” of the Company is committed to the highest ethical standards and open to the most transparent scrutiny. You’ll probably even see an impressive array of policy and compliance guidelines.

Lofty stuff, indeed.

As with most noble intentions, though, the devil is in the details. The culprit is the complexity. The concept is sound but the execution can be shaky.

The Triple Whammy of Compliance

Now, we’re not compliance experts. We’ll leave that to the legal and business consultancies that suddenly realized they were experts, oh, say, within nanoseconds of the ink drying on the Sarbanes-Oxley bill. (Timing, as they say, is everything: had these folks realized they were such experts prior to the Wall Street scandals and SOX, well, we may not have had those scandals and any need for that law.)

We do know, however, what we have observed as investors, investors who happen to have a stakeholder interest in the ethical stewardship of our hard-earned investment dollars. Specifically, from an investor perspective the new emphasis on compliance has produced three (3) key dynamics:

1. Compliance is costly.
2. Compliance is complex.
3. Compliance creates bureaucracy.

Cost: Executives have rightfully complained of the excessive costs involved with regulatory compliance. There are legal and advisory costs. There is the cost of creating, maintaining and administering a whole new set of policies. There are people and systems costs, and on and on …

Complexity: Business is complex enough but the new emphasis on it has added a new level of complexity to business decisions, strategy and execution. Keeping up with the rules and regulations is not only costly but also time-consuming. The volume of information can be overwhelming.

This has spawned an unintended consequence: the more rules that are created, the more violations occur. This is because the rules become so complex and cumbersome to administer that even those companies who try to do it exactly “by the book” can make a misstep and innocently overlook something. Don’t believe it? Talk to an NCAA coach or athlete who has fallen innocent victim to the labyrinth of arcane regulations in the NCAA rulebooks.

Bureaucracy: SOX, etc, has prompted the need for a whole new set of policies, processes and programs. Effectively administering these things requires, more people. With more people, come more layers. And to oversee all these new things, we even have to have a new C-level executive: the Chief Compliance Officer. Presto … instant bureaucracy! Decision-making is slowed down due to more approval requirements and levels. Productivity is hampered. Strategy and decision-making are stymied as they wait for rigorous risk assessments to be made.

The fragmented rules and regulations from increased compliance have resulted in a cost, complexity and confusion that can hurt performance. It's a classic example of the Law of Unintended Consequences: As the level of effort required for greater stewardship and governance increases, competitiveness can decrease. And the more a company tries to do the right thing by protecting shareholders' investments, the more investment dollars it wastes from the red tape and administrivia associated with the current state of compliance.

A Compliance Trifecta

Compliance is largely a function of managing and communicating information. Better organization of compliance information and more effective communication of it can result in a hitting the trifecta: being a compliant company ... but staying competitive while doing it cost-effectively.

Since we are talking about managing and communicating information, this means that information technology can play a leading role. In turn, this requires the compliance stakeholders and IT teams to work together.

Currently, this either is not being done at all or not being done on an effective basis. One reason is that compliance, as we know it today, is still relatively new. Companies are still learning how to best achieve it on the fly. So the idea of leveraging IT to improve compliance productivity and effectiveness is still very much in its infancy. Most of the IT applications to date are of the “band aid, quick fix” variety.

It’s also a tough proposition to use IT in compliance management because the information required is very cross-functional in nature; i.e. it cuts across so many, if not all, of a company’s business functions and processes.

Much of the information also tends to be qualitative rather than quantitative. It is not simple data and numbers but a fair amount of unstructured information that makes it hard to digitize and automate. So many of the regulations and rules involved are the kind of prose and legalese that don’t lend themselves to the kind of neat little spreadsheet pigeon-holing we love so much.

A Compliance Solution

Despite these challenges to using IT for achieving productive compliance, there is a solution -- a modest one in the grand scheme of things, but a solution nonetheless.

Using our Ratchet-X integration software, the chief compliance officer and compliance stakeholders can use an IT-based solution to improve the management, maintenance, monitoring and communication of key compliance information throughout the company.

The solution is not limited in scope to SOX compliance. It is portable to other Regulatory areas, such as FDA or SEC compliance. The software can also facilitate U.S. Customs and C-TPAT compliance for import and export supply chains, as well as product safety and factory certifications for offshore sourcing.

The solution focus also is not limited to external regulatory compliance: it also can be used for internal Corporate programs, such as internal audit, accounting, product testing and policy compliance, as well as supplier/vendor and customer compliance management.

Whether for internal or external purposes, compliance cuts cuts across a wide spectrum of functional boundaries and systems these days. And whether your business involves toys or turbines, the common link in all these scenarios is information. Specifically, the ability to connect, consolidate and communicate the qualitative and quantitative information required for effective compliance.

Integrating this information is where we can help. Since seeing is believing, please check out the link below for a video about how Ratchet-X integration can make your compliance efforts more effective and productive … and a lot less costly.

http://www.ratchetsoft.com/videoseries/compliance/compliance.html

Where Dinosaurs Roam

2007-10-23T18:41:00.000-05:00

Legacy systems.

They are something we’re all familiar with and virtually every business has. On the IT evolutionary scale, they reside somewhere between an endangered species and extinction.

Nevertheless, legacy systems are the logical fallout from a world where technological change takes place at a dizzying pace. A world where modifications and new functionality are requested almost as soon as a new application is first implemented. Three forces (3) drive this:

1. Operational changes – Customer requirements change. Competitive dynamics change. Business processes and policy change. This means that the systems supporting them have to change too.

2. Technological changes – Improvements and innovations occur in IT technology almost daily. So each day, current applications and systems are rendered just a little less relevant – and eventually become antiquated.

3. Financial changes – In the quest for greater profitability, management continuously seeks to tighten budgets, cut headcount and expenses, and freeze capital investment.

All these forces of change can conspire to force business units to forego investment in new systems or technologies, to delay IT projects, and to hold on to older systems just one more year.

For example, let’s assume that one business unit of a company had a project planned for a major functionality overhaul of a legacy system. But then IT layoffs are announced and a freeze is placed on hiring outside contractors. Oops … project cancelled.

Or let’s say another business unit was planning to buy new software to upgrade the capabilities of its supply chain systems. But then the CFO orders a suspension of all capital investment projects. Suddenly, it’s back to using horse-and-buggy functionality in the ol’ supply chain.

When this occurs, there are two (2) options: a) whine about the lack of resources and cling to those old systems while watching them go the way of the dinosaur; or b) be creative, act smart.

Other than lend a sympathetic ear, we can’t help much with Option A. But thanks to the integration capabilities of Ratchet-X software, we can provide significant help with Option B.

Using the Ratchet-X toolbox, companies can revive those legacy systems and make them more relevant to users. How? The ability of Ratchet-X to integrate data and functionality from System A with that of System B without changing the source code to either application … while delivering new functionality and capabilities directly to a user’s desktop.

That project that was cancelled or that software purchase that was squashed? Who cares? From a functionality standpoint, the integration capabilities of Ratchet-X can serve as a viable and cost-effective alternative to providing the functionality that the cancelled project or software purchase would have provided.

It’s a classic example of doing more with what you have. It’s an opportunity to leverage a greater ROI from an existing system that probably has already been fully depreciated rather than having to justify the ROI for investment in a proposed new system.

If you are like most companies today, you probably are facing the prospect of having to make do with legacy system(s) without the immediate prospect of obtaining funding for the resources and technology to replace those systems. You probably face the same resource, expense and budget constraints as your colleagues in other companies.

If this is the challenge you are facing and you would like to overcome it by being creative and acting smart, then maybe we can help. We’ll look forward to discussing if we are up to the challenge of helping you overcome The Legacy System Challenge.

And we’ll look forward to helping you take those dinosaur systems, and turning that fossilized functionality and decaying data into the new fuel that powers business today: timely, relevant, actionable INFORMATION.

Don't take our word for it

2007-10-11T18:54:00.000-05:00

For all their incredible diversity, virtually every blog has one thing in common: they tend to be self-serving forums for their authors. This blog being no exception.

Whether serving as a personal diary, a platform for ranting and rumors or an extension of a business web site, blogs are not exactly the most objective sources of content and opinion. So trying to present honest and objective perspectives about RatchetSoft products and services on this blog can certainly raise skeptical eyebrows from a reader.

To counter this, we thought we would try something a bit different: let someone else do the talking for us.

We happen to think that mashup technology can provide a company with tremendous synergy and leverage from its existing application systems. The idea of doing more with what you already have is certainly appealing to any productivity-driven business. And the ability to it for a lot less than the cost of adding a new application should warm the heart of any budget-conscious manager.

Well, that’s essentially what our mashup is all about: taking Application A and Application B, then adding a mashup to create new and greater functionality without changing the source code in the original applications.

Obviously, we’re bullish on what a mashup can do for the IT portfolio and budget of any company. But don’t take our word for it. For a more objective opinion, check out a what the well-respected Gartner Inc. recently wrote about the value of mashups:

“Mashups are popular because they can be created easily. Because mashup applications can be created quickly and inexpensively, they enable a new class of more-opportunistic and disposable applications that, before mashups, would never have received IT development investment. Another benefit is that users can easily personalize mashup content displays. Thus, mashups seem to be an answer for enterprises that want to roll out content aggregation software to meet the various demands of business unit users, who want the flexibility to do different things by combining available data and functionality from inside and outside the enterprise.” [1]

That’s a pretty compelling statement from a highly regarded and objective source. No bloggers blowing any smoke here.

The report, entitled “Who's Who in Enterprise 'Mashup' Technologies” (available on a subscription basis only), is a comprehensive and objective inventory of current mashup players. In short, it attempts to sift through the mish mash of mashup technologies and vendors.

As early entrants and key players in the mashup arena, we are especially proud that the report categorized us as a “unique vendor.” It went on to label Ratchet-X, our mashup product, as “a good example of a mashup implementation as the ‘face of SOA,’ where services are consumed at the presentation layer rather than the application layer.” (Page 14).

So there you have it. Naturally, we believe strongly in the power of mashup technology, Ratchet-X and its ability to deliver productivity and cost savings to corporate IT applications. More importantly, it is becoming more and more apparent that objective third-party experts are offering testimony for this same belief … and it's certainly one worth exploring for those looking to achieve a greater ROI from their existing IT capabilities.

[1] Source: Gartner Research Publication. Publication Date: 7 September 2007/ID Number: G0015135. Anthony Bradley, David Gootzit (Page 3) © 2007 Gartner, Inc. and/or its Affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

Ratchet-X Product Methodology Docs

2007-09-27T18:47:00.000-05:00

A number of folks have asked us for documentation regarding the methodology our professional services group employs for Ratchet-X rollouts. Well, the wait is over. While there is no "right" way to use or rollout Ratchet-X, there certainly are best practices you can adhere to help ensure your project goes as smooth as possible. If you're interested, feel free to download our methodology documentation from our web site support page under the Knowledge & Education section.

If you have any questions, comments or ways we can improve the methodology based on your experience, drop us a line at support@ratchetsoft.com.

Release of Ratchet-X Community Edition

2007-09-20T12:01:00.000-05:00

We've received many requests from system integrators looking to test drive Ratchet-X before they recommend it to clients or build vertical solutions upon it. Rather than accommodating these requests by merely making a free trial available, we've decided to go them one better and release Ratchet-X Community Edition.

Ratchet-X Community is a totally free version of the platform that allows you to create appspaces for any desktop application and grants you unrestricted access to all Ratchet-X Online plug-ins. Now, for free, you can create live Ratchet-X implementations that take full advantage of Ratchet-X Online services.

If you have any questions about Ratchet-X Community, don't hesitate to drop me a line at jlabbe@ratchetsoft.com. In the meantime, we encourage you to download the software and check it out.

Information Liquidity

2007-06-21T12:19:00.000-05:00

Information Liquidity

Financial executives have long understood the meaning and importance of liquidity. The current emphasis on “free cash flow” is the latest testimony to this.

And anyone responsible for finance and accounting operations today is keenly aware of the prominent role information plays in managing, moving and measuring money.

(For practical corporate examples of this, see the links in the blog post on this site titled: “Newton’s New Laws.” )

Although financial managers are very familiar with the independent roles that “liquidity” and “information” play, the combined idea of information liquidity may actually seem quite foreign.

The concept of information liquidity is very simple: Use information systems and technology to move money faster within and between companies.

Viewed another way, it’s the idea of leveraging information flow within a company to accelerate cash flow for the Company … a matter of converting bits and bytes into more dollars and cents.

The benefit is clear-cut: better cash flow and improved financial productivity.

The execution, however, has been trickier because it requires the timely and efficient integration of the various sources and systems that supply the financial and accounting organization with the information it needs. And it requires building electronic bridges between the islands of information that exist between the various operational functions in a business that produce and share this information.

For example, the “typical” portfolio of systems found in accounting and finance today might include:

· An ERP-based system that hosts a set of core financial modules (e.g., General Ledger, Invoicing, A/P)
· EDI and EFT systems
· Budgeting systems
· Financial modeling and decision support systems
· Metrics (dashboards, scorecards and cockpits and any other assorted pet names for digital instrumentation)
· External systems (banking, IRS, vendor, customers, payroll, etc.)
· A plethora of subsystems and spreadsheets that seem to multiply like kudzu vines on a Southern highway

Within each of these groups of systems there is usually some degree of integration, but there are still miles to go before this is optimized. Users still complain about "rigid" applications that don't give them the flexibility they need to access or manipulate data in new or ad hoc ways to meet their special needs. The approach to overcoming this deficiency is either manual-intensive effort or some of kind of makeshift spreadsheet.

The problem is significantly compounded, though, when we consider the level of integration between these various systems. Users who rely on the efficient flow of data and information that flows across these numerous and disparate systems are forced to cut-and-paste their way to what they need. If put on a flow chart, these improvised work-around routines would look like a Rube Goldberg contraption. (For proof, have someone in your organization chart all the systems modules and interfaces used by the financial and accounting teams. Be careful: you may find yourself trying to put tomato sauce on what looks like an IT version of a plate of spaghetti.)

The patchwork of applications, and the lack of integration that results, lessens productivity and means lost opportunity. The delays in the flow of work, information and money, are the equivalent of stopping and paying a toll every time we go from one system, function and user to another. It stymies speed and the organization's demand for rapid information. It impedes efficient reporting and analysis. It chokes the ability to get things done.

The lack of financial systems integration is well understood by the users themselves. But the inefficiency tends to go unnoticed at the managerial and executive level because they are not directly involved with it, they can't see it for themselves. And with good reason: there are much more important priorities to worry about than something so mundane. But the compounded effect of this lack of information liquidity has a huge productivity-killing effect that is significant to a company's overall performance and productivity.

The bottom line is this: Tremendous strides have been made implementing standalone systems that automate accounting and financial transactions. But when it comes to integrating that information flow within and between these systems, there is a basic disconnect. The result is a non-integrated and under performing portfolio of financial systems and capabilities. Such performance would create a red flag for any financial manager if it involved assets and dollars. But because of its "techie" nature, financial systems integration flies under the radar fairly undetected.

Fixing the financial integration problem way sound like it is daunting and expensive. After all, we are talking about a highly diverse set of systems, functions, processes and users that are involved.

Actually, the solution is simpler and cheaper than one might think. For example, Ratchet-X software from RatchetSoft is a premier example of such a solution. By using the power and flexibility of XML coupled with proprietary software and know-how, Ratchet-X offers financial executives a productivity tool that will provide better integration within and between systems, as well as closer collaboration between departments. And the real value is that Ratchet-X is budget-friendly and can be implemented without changing the source code of your core systems.

For financial executives looking to improve the productivity of their systems assets and employees, Ratchet-X may is well worth a look. It is an innovative tool that can help unlock the "information liquidity" in a company. The asset, systems and productivity optimization that can be realized by using it are something no productivity-minded executive will want to overlook.

Google Gears...Not Sure I Get It

2007-06-06T11:29:00.000-05:00

Am I missing something? Am I totally out of touch with the way people work? Am I spoiled because I’m wired out the wazoo? Maybe. I’m trying to get my mind around Google Gears and I must admit, I just don’t see why so many are so excited about it. This has nothing to do with Google or their implementation of Gears. I’m sure the ideas and quality of implementation are top notch like most of Google's other APIs. But is the plight of the disconnected user still the major problem it was back in the day when people needed to go to the office to get internet access? I wouldn’t think so.

No doubt, I see the benefit of implementing a local cache server that allows users to interact with an application while highly consumptive processes are ported to a background process thus freeing up the UI. But most well architected applications have that problem resolved by design. So, the benefit here is marginal. Further, when you factor in the additional support issues of managing that new resource coupled with synch support, I question the true net gain.

Next, many users who need to squeeze every last drop of productivity out of every waking moment can pretty much access an internet connection at will. Air travel represents the last frontier of disconnectedness but so too will this frontier be conquered. Everyday, market forces are busy at work supplying me with more, less expensive ways to connect to the web across an increasing number of devices. I think it's safe to say finding a connection for the average worker when need is not a big problem.

Finally, in order for offline system access to really pay dividends, it needs to be passive. Passive meaning applications should inherit this capability from some layer of devliery infrastructure and I as a user should not have to plan for it in advance. Otherwise, the technology will be useful only to disconnected data entry folks whose application developers had the forethought and will to design, and just as importantly, test this feature.

We debated the plight of the disconnected user when designing Ratchet-X. We punted on the issue due to the fact our product is all about connecting applications to services, web sites, databases, etc. There's not much to connect to if your application integration options are limited to your machine. However, we do allow you to exchange information between applications on your computer regardless of whether you’re wired or not. So, this time saving feature should free you up so you can spend more time sleeping on those long flights - at least for a little while longer.

Newton's New Laws: Application Integration and Organizational Performance

2007-04-24T09:40:00.000-05:00

Sir Isaac Newton may have been the first organizational expert. Although his Three Laws of Motion were created to explain Nature’s dynamics, they are equally relevant to the organizational dynamics in business today.

Forget those “7 Successful Steps to Anything” come-ons. Disregard the “Read My 12 Steps and You’ll Really Be A CEO” snake oil. Say goodbye to the “Mimic Everything Company X Does and Your Company Will Be Excellent, Too” handbooks.

When it comes to really knowing what it takes to achieve organizational excellence, Sir Ike was the first and still the best. Let’s start at the start – with his 1st Law of Motion:

Newton’s 1st Law: “Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.”

Business Translation: Organizations constantly need a good, swift kick in the behind

Newton was simply saying that things will remain status quo -- unless somebody acts. For businesses, this means that if they cling to the status quo long enough, complacency and inefficiency will creep in. Processes become stale. "shortcuts" become confused with "productivity." Policy trumps results. Work becomes routine. Employees lose interest. And leading-edge technology soon devolves into tomorrow's "legacy system."

Organizations are like the Greek myth of Sisyphus. He’s the guy who angered the gods, so his punishment was to keep rolling a rock up the mountain only to have it roll back down again just before it reached the peak. For Sisyphus, the rock was his fate.

For business organizations, complacency can become their fate. How else to explain the constant downsizing, turnarounds, de-layering and revolving door of executives that seem so prevalent in business today? After all, a business that is operating at peak performance wouldn’t need this kind of upheaval. So these changes become the business equivalent of Newton's “external forces.” Only in this case, the external forces are from investors, shareholders and customers who have grown angry at complacent organizations that are not operating at peak performance levels.

But there are companies who don’t allow themselves to cling to the status quo. These companies won't stand for getting rocked by the competition. Complacency is not their fate. They control their own destiny. They "get it.”

And those who really get it, get IT. These companies don’t view information technology as a necessary evil or mundane back office processing. They implement, innovate and integrate IT to drive productivity and operational efficiency in the workplace with a commercial advantage in the marketplace.

Want examples? Check out JP Morgan and its renowned CEO, Jamie Dimon. (A good synopsis of his view of the role IT plays in his organization is found toward the end of this article: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/04/03/8373068/index.htm)

GE Healthcare's Centricity (c) system is another example of a company who gets IT by using application integration to win in the outpatient healthcare marketplace. Frost & Sullivan has concluded that this integrated information solution has given GE "an edge over other market participants, making it a pioneer in clinical IT solutions ... creating significant brand value ... providing [continuous] competitive advantage ... and a sizeable mind share."
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/prnewswire/DATU01224042007-1.htm

But for companies who get it and get IT, “it” is not just a matter of chasing the next big thing in lemming-like fashion. It doesn't mean merely buying a major new system every few years. You can’t buy excellence.

The business organizations that truly get it leverage the systems they have, make smart upgrades and add new applications on a systematic and judicious basis.

One of the biggest ways these firms win with IT is through more efficient and effective integration of existing systems and applications. If productivity means doing more with the same or less, then this is the ultimate in productivity. In systems integration terms, this can be done by simply being more resourceful with the system resources already in place. In fact, in many companies, low productivity isn’t the result of a lack of data or applications. It is the inability of end users to easily and efficiently access existing data from existing applications in order to perform their work.

In support of this claim, one company analyzed its backlog of end user-driven IT projects. The surprising finding: 62% of the IT projects were related to better data integration from current systems. This was a huge productivity opportunity. And it didn’t beg for building new applications; it simply required better integration among existing ones. Doing this, of course, requires the right integration platform and tools.

Think about it. Let’s assume a company is on a major productivity initiative. One of the strategies they decide upon is to boost productivity by analyzing opportunities from IT. Would it be a better business decision to replace or rewrite applications in which millions of dollars may have been already invested? Or would the smart play be to take what you have and use cost-effective tools to integrate them more efficiently so that end users become more productive?

The good news is that as budget-friendly integration tools, such as Ratchet-X, come on the scene, this low-hanging fruit will become even easier to pick. And as it does, it won’t take an apple hitting us on the head to discover how information integration can be a powerful internal force for driving productivity and destroying inefficiency – before external forces demand drastic action.

Contextual Advertising and Enterprise Applications

2007-04-19T07:35:00.000-05:00

In a recent blog entry entitled; "My favorite Web 2.0 themes: SOA and business applications as advertising platforms", Dana Garner comments; “I’m listening for the rumblings of how innovative advertising will augment the subscription model for SaaS and mashed-up web services in business use.” I believe the days of enterprises sanctioning the use of sponsored software is well on its way. I say this because we’ve seen it first hand at RatchetSoft. Although our Ratchet-X software is not currently sponsored, we have been asked by a number of service providers to release an advertiser supported version of our desktop integration platform. Why is this? The logic becomes apparent when you ask yourself the following question. How much would I as an advertiser pay to have my services advertised at the exact moment a prospect is performing an act where my services are most applicable? It’s all about context and relevancy to the prospect.

For example, let’s say a credit bureau wants to increase the distribution of its credit reports. While conducting an online campaign based on keywords and advertising networks has value, it requires the user to proactively find the advertisers ad by either conducting a search on purchased keywords or visiting a site in the network that is deemed relevant. Alternatively, the credit bureau could advertise through Ratchet-X and present its offer at that point the prospect is adding a vendor to her/his accounting system. Which scenario is more likely to result in a sale?

Since Ratchet-X understands the context of a transaction in terms of: a) which applications are in use, b) what functions are being performed and c) what data is required to perform those functions, Ratchet-X is in a much better position to sell the service. In other words, the ad is being served at the point of need precisely at the time the prospect needs the service being advertised.

So what’s in it for the prospect? First, if the user is getting the Ratchet-X functionality for free in return for the advertisement, that offers significant value. Second, since we contextually understand what the user needs, the advertiser can offer a broader array of relevant free and/or premium services.

Assuming the economics work for both the advertisers and the underlying delivery channel, the value provided to the prospect is worth the “intrusion”, and a guarantee is made that prospect specific information is used to merely target ads and is not shared with the advertiser, the value proposition for sponsored software in the enterprise becomes more attractive.

Make Mine A Mashup Please

2007-04-04T11:39:00.000-05:00

Peter Rip of Crosslink Capital recently posted an entry on his EarlyStageVC blog entitled "Web 2.0 - Over and Out". While his comments have kicked up quite a bit of dust in Web 2.0 circles (mostly with aspiring vendors in the space), many of his points are reasonable. More specifically, his points with regard to the next wave of innovation and websites being islands of isolation are spot on. But Peter's post deals mainly with the consumer side of the Web 2.0 story. While the challenges to innovate and monetize efforts serving consumers is significant, I believe the most difficult challenges await those helping Web 2.0 succeed within the enterprise.

While the Web 2.0 moniker is manifesting itself in a numnber of different ways within the enterprise, the chatter I hear most from customers has to do with user empowerment via enterprise mashups. It seems every day a new vendor emerges with a mashup or composite application framework that promises to allow users to reuse their organization's programmed assets and mash them together to create new applications. It's a good story and believe me, noboby would like to this vision realized more than me.

Unfortunately, despite all these vendors' best efforts, the use of enterprise mashup tools is still heavily bifurcated with nary an end user in sight. On one hand, the tool is being used by power users to create glorified reports or basic mashups that contain very little function specific logic - simlar to that of portals. On the other hand, you've got IT support personnel and some programmers who've been lured in by the mirage of point and click graphical programming. While it may impress some, most developers are left shaking their heads asking; "why learn a new tool to do the same things I can do in the programming language I already know?"

The bottom line is users have a difficult time understanding complex data types, conditional logic, order of operations, arrays, enums, etc. Vendors can up with all kinds of disarming terms to mask these programming constructs but in the end, they're just that...programming constructs. And unfortunately, in order for the end user community to build a mashup or composite application of any significance, they will need to master these concepts.

So how do we empower the user via Web 2.0 services? We believe a valuable interim step is to provide tooling that allows users to integrate programmed assets into the applications they already use, not create new ones. By integrating into existing applications using a technology such as Ratchet-X, the task at hand becomes very tangbile. They don't have to think in terms of data grids or sets, rather, they think in terms they already know such as invoices, customers, etc. At this stage of the game, most users are looking to link their systems together to get more comprehensive views of the business challenges they face. They don't need new applications and they sure as heck don't want to build them. Rather, they want to link their existing applications to the other applications, sites, services, databases and forms that make up the full story. In other words, they want to make the application they already use, their system of record if you will, the mashup.

Ratchet-X Is No Silver Bullet

2007-03-03T09:04:00.001-05:00

Like any software vendor, I’d love nothing better than to tell you Ratchet-X will magically solve all your application integration problems. However, I’d be lying and you’d know it. While it’s not hard to find a point solution for a specific integration project, there are no silver bullets with regard to developing a broad systems integration strategy. Organizations that have to integrate with applications at the desktop, batch processes and ESBs need to pick and choose the solutions that best fit the task at hand and is consistent with the organization’s capabilities. Most successful organizations realize that having a methodical approach to solving integration challenges is more important than how or which tool is used to solve any one particular challenge.

People ask me all the time; “Can I use Ratchet-X to do this or can I use it to do that?” While Ratchet-X is an exceptionally versatile tool for desktop application integration, it cannot nor should it be contorted to be all things to all people. Ratchet-X is not the hammer that turns all your integration challenges into nails.

Ratchet-X is a user-centric solution that serves the integration needs of a given user at a point in time - point in time meaning specific applications initiating specific functions when the user needs it. So, if you need to push data to or pull data from other applications, services, forms, web sites, Ratchet-X is a tool worth considering. However, it is not an ESB, not a batch processing tool and certainly not an EAI platform. If your organization requires those kinds of solutions, you should consider any one of the number of fine options available.

At RatchetSoft, we recognize our products are merely parts of your overall integration strategy and are committed to making sure the solutions we propose are consistent with your integration strategy, not our sales strategy.

Ratchet-X and Application Support Headaches

2007-02-19T17:37:00.000-05:00

Speaking with prospective customers every day, I’ve gotten quite good at handling the few objections people pose to implementing Ratchet-X. However, the one objection that continues to vex me is an issue over which we have little control. The issue is service support. When raised, the objection usually comes in two parts. The first part has to do with the reliability of the services that comprise a Ratchet-X plug-in. The second part has to do with application support staff’s ability to discern native application features from Ratchet-X enabled features.

Let’s start with the first part of the objection. Concerns over the reliability of underlying services comprising composite applications, mashups and “super-services” is nothing new. In fact, I wrote an article back in 2001 addressing this exact concern. Although six years have passed since I wrote that article, this concern is still alive and well, especially in organizations that have yet to implement proper SOA governance infrastructure and problem resolution procedures geared towards supporting spontaneous application generation. The bottom line is an organization’s SOA is not ready for prime time without the proper controls in place to monitor underlying services and provide immediate contingency in case of service failure.

The solution to the second part of the objection is not as clear cut. Although we tend to get the objection more from software vendors rather than enterprise customers, I believe it applies to any organization that takes application support seriously. Ratchet-X is all about creating user-centric software by allowing users to add new capabilities to existing applications. While that’s great for users, it presents special challenges for those responsible for supporting those applications. In other words, how do support personnel provide support for application features they’re not aware of? For the enterprise customer, we need to look much further the answer to the first part of the objection. The best way to solve this problem is to make sure these new features (plug-ins in Ratchet-X parlance), are incorporated into the organization’s SOA discovery and governance infrastructure. Since most plug-ins are comprised of, and in effect, function like web services, they should leverage the same infrastructure. Plug-ins should be registered, versioned, hosted and documented the same way all the organization’s services are handled.

In the case of software vendors, the issue is muddied by the fact they have to support multiple customer installations without access to and/or integration with such governance infrastructure. Nor do they really want that level of involvement with their customers. In the end, software vendors prefer their customers to look more alike than not. This being the case, it makes more sense for software vendors to direct their clients towards certified system integrators well-versed in both the vendor’s application and Ratchet-X. Since Ratchet-X opens up new revenue generation opportunities for systems integrators, they are both happier and more qualified to take on this kind of systems integration and support than the software vendors themselves.

If you have any other thoughts on this support issue, comment on this article or drop me a line. I’d like to hear your thoughts on the matter.

Are Content Proivders Ready For Web Services?

2007-02-01T21:42:00.001-05:00

Although the current incarnation of “software as a service” has been around for six years (branded as web services or SOA), I continue to be amazed at the number of content providers that remain unprepared for the new distribution channels afforded by web services. Interestingly enough, most of the hand wringing surrounding web services has more to do with developing a coherent business model that supports the channel rather than the technologies required to leverage the channel. Fear of alienating traditional partners, cannibalizing existing sales and in some cases, sheer market leader arrogance, are keeping many providers on the sidelines.

Without a doubt, web services is a both disruptive technology and business concept. The prospects of devising new business models to support customers of different stripes can be daunting. However, web services offers providers a golden opportunity to expand distribution beyond the narrow market segments they traditionally serve. So while the challenge of constructing new models is significant, failure to do so can be devastating. Most organizations are slow to implement new or supplemental business models because; they’re expensive to devise, promote and implement, they’re difficult to retract and they may expose broader strategic plans to competitors. While these concerns are genuine, collectively, they represent the largest impediments to innovation which is an open invitation to bolder and more nimble competitors.

So, is there a way to gauge the new business opportunities presented by web services in a covert way? The answer is yes and the concept is far from new. For years, organizations have tested new offerings and expanded distribution through carefully selected partners. In fact, there are a number of syndication partnerships in the content business today that could easily serve as a model for organizations looking for new distribution channels. For example, a number of content and software providers have partnered with companies such as Salesforce.com to co-distribute their wares in ways and at price points they never dreamed possible. Although most customers think of these combined offerings as “Saleforce add-ins”, they actually allow providers to test new business models in a more covert manner. By providing add-ins under the Saleforce umbrella, providers are free to experiment and limit the risks of making a commitment to a specific model.

The point is content providers need to acknowledge that web services will ultimately change the way their industry works and open them up to a plethora of new opportunities and customers. However, there is no need to go for broke right out of the gate when they can test new business models by partnering with organizations such as strong vertical application providers, web services networks and data aggregators.

In the web services world, content providers should look for partners who have complementary offerings that can be bundled together to create new offerings.

New Rich Client Tools

2007-02-01T21:13:00.000-05:00

There’s been a spate of articles in the press of late extolling the virtues of a “rich application user experience”. As Internet-based computing matures and distributing applications become mainstream, users are asking the question; “why does the interface have to be so primitive?” While the computing ubiquity afforded by the browser has been a tremendous advancement in application distribution, its least common denominator interface has taken a toll on user productivity. Simply stated, application interfaces are more archaic and harder to use then they were during the client-server era.

Well worry no more. At last count, there were over twenty companies who have created alternative development platforms that allow developers to create rich client applications that fuse the benefits of Internet computing with robust user interfaces. Regardless of whether these new products are server-based, client-based or a combination of the two, all of these solutions allow developers to build sophisticated user interfaces without sacrificing the distribution benefits previously enjoyed only by browser applications.

This is all well and good but now developers have a new problem on their hands. While developers want to deliver better and easier to use applications to their users, they’ve spent a lot of time and effort acquiring their current skill sets and are going try to leverage those skills across as many projects as possible. Why take the time to learn yet another development environment when the tools they use day-in and day-out will most often suffice? Sure, some of these new products may perform a little better or have a few extra features, but ultimately, the more applications a developer can roll out using the same set of tools, the better off everyone will be. Applications will get rolled out faster, will be more stable and easier supported.

So despite the recent flood of product announcements, we believe most of these new vendors will not survive because developers will continue to use the tools with which they are already comfortable. This is especially the case when you consider the fact that support of service-based computing is job one for many of the larger tool vendors and that a feature that shows up in startup vendor A’s product will most likely appear in the next version of vendor B’s product.

The bottom line is developers want to leverage their skills across as many projects as possible and we don’t believe they will embrace these new tools en mass unless these vendors create something truly unique. Based on the attention being paid to this space by the major development players, this scenario is unlikely. While there will be some attention paid to these new offerings, in the end, developers will pass on these products and seek solutions that are compatible with the languages and development environments they already use.

Welcome To The RatchetSoft Blog

2007-02-01T20:58:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the RatchetSoft blog. This blog is designed to facilitate a free and open discussion regarding user desktop integration issues and RatchetSoft's products and services. While you will find posts pertaining to some of the technical issues that help shape our offerings, it is not intended to serve as a technical support blog for our products. If you are looking for that kind of content, please visit our support forum at http://forums.ratchetsoft.com.

Thank you again for visiting and we hope you find this blog informative and entertaining.

Joe Labbe