Flowfinity Wireless Inc.
Wireless Software Maker Turns to SQL Server, Visual Studio to Enhance Products
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Company Overview
Flowfinity Wireless Inc. of Vancouver delivers products and solutions for wireless applications on mobile devices. Since 2000, the Microsoft® Certified Partner has developed several unique innovations, resulting in over 200 pages of patent specifications. Flowfinity has a growing base of enterprise customers in North America and Europe. The company helps them streamline distributed business processes and customers are attracted to Flowfinity’s ability to provide a significant return on their wireless investments.
Business Challenge
As a technology partner, Flowfinity works with Microsoft-based software, which it includes in its products. Among those products is Flowfinity Actions software, which enables users of Research in Motion BlackBerry® handheld devices to access and store critical workplace data residing in Microsoft-based server software at anytime, from anywhere. This software is easily customizable, making these applications easy to sell by wireless carriers around the world.
Flowfinity faced several challenges as it strived to serve the needs of a wireless workforce. The first was finding a way to better synchronize server applications based on Microsoft software with the BlackBerry platform. “Before we worked with Microsoft, there was no optimized way available for wireless BlackBerry users to use Microsoft tools,” says Dmitry Mikhailov, president and CEO, Flowfinity.
Connectivity posed another challenge. Uptime is never as reliable when using wireless devices as connections can be interrupted for a variety of reasons. A worker submitting data via a Web form or sending a document risks losing their data when a connection fails. Flowfinity wanted to cache information entered into a mobile device in such a way that data wouldn’t be lost, even if a wireless connection was terminated.
Wireless wasn’t the only issue Flowfinity wanted to address. It also needed to enhance the functionality of its Flowfinity Actions application. Flowfinity Actions is used by more than 100 companies, several of which are listed in the Fortune 500. The tool helps users with field inspections and data collection, enabling them to access Microsoft-based applications on BlackBerry devices while on the road. The data is then stored in a central location.
“But users also need reporting capabilities. Simply collecting information wasn’t enough. Once users collect data from the field, it has to be made available to managers who need to make decisions – and understand what their customers are doing – based on that. To achieve this, you need a powerful reporting capability. That’s what we wanted,” says Mikhailov.
Flowfinity considered database tools, but wanted a reporting solution that was easy to install and intuitive enough for business users to quickly learn.
Having committed three years ago to the Microsoft-based platform, Flowfinity turned to Microsoft in search of tools that could help it build more effective mobility applications and help its customers access data in a faster, more intelligent way. To help accomplish this, it implemented Visual Studio® 2005 development system and SQL Server™ 2005.
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Solution
Since 2004 Flowfinity has worked closely with the Microsoft platform, porting its mobile technology to devices using Windows® Mobile 5.0. But it needed a way to help users of BlackBerry devices access Microsoft-based productivity applications that didn’t also consume large amounts of developer time and resources along the way.
That’s when it discovered Visual Studio 2005 and the native ASP.NET 2.0 platform. ASP.NET enables Flowfinity developers to write for a variety of environments. “In this new architecture Microsoft has put a layer on the server that allows developers to render controls differently, not just in HTML. You can render them in different ways for different clients,” says Mikhailov.
This has helped Flowfinity build an adapter, called Blackbird, which allows these controls to be used by BlackBerry users. Flowfinity developers don’t require new APIs to build them – Visual Studio 2005 provides the flexibility and support they need to support multiple environments. “Developers don’t have to worry about learning proprietary languages. They can stay in the Microsoft-based environment, so there are no additional training requirements,” says Mikhailov.
In order to enhance the functionality of Flowfinity Actions, Flowfinity registered for the Microsoft ISV Royalty program, which enabled it to embed SQL Server 2005 into Actions. Thus, customers will receive future versions of the tool with SQL Server 2005 built in.
Flowfinity briefly considered other data reporting tools, but it was impressed with the ease and flexibility of SQL Server 2005. Reporting Services in SQL Server 2005 provides additional enterprise reporting capabilities and addresses a new audience - business users who want to interact with data in an ad hoc fashion. It also helps them create their own reports from scratch and to share them with others. “This simplifies reporting, which is very useful for our enterprise customers. It’s also great for ISVs like us, as we can give customers very basic training and have them be able to really drill down into their data with no extra development or complexity,” says Mikhailov.
Business Benefits
Implementing Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 has helped Flowfinity better serve its partners and customers. Visual Studio has given Flowfinity the means to deliver more effective wireless business applications to its partner community, helping to ensure its customers become more productive in the field. SQL Server 2005 has also been embedded in Flowfinity Actions software, giving businesses a powerful reporting capability and the ability to make better decisions.
Enhanced mobile productivity
Before adopting Visual Studio 2005, linking Microsoft-based software with BlackBerry devices was a difficult and time-intensive process. Using ASP.NET 2.0 developers can write controls once for any environment and aren’t required to learn any competitive or proprietary languages.
Using Visual Studio 2005, Flowfinity has written a caching application that can help wireless customers save critical data even if an unexpected disconnection occurs during transmission. “As a result, the application is not just faster, it has improved fundamentally. It doesn’t lose data when a connection is dropped, which is a must-have for enterprises.” says Mikhailov.
Streamlined development process
Developers who use Visual Studio 2005 with Flowfinity’s Blackbird can use the same code for both their Web development efforts and their wireless development projects.
“We didn’t introduce any new APIs or controls. We used exactly what developers already know, so there’s no training. You just sit down and start building your application and it works. You can even take old projects and test them and convert them to wireless. Visual Studio directly addresses the pain that these developers always had,” says Mikhailov.
Ability to make better decisions
Embedding SQL Server 2005 into Flowfinity Actions gives enterprise customers an end-to-end solution that helps customers gather data in the field, store it in a database and access that information to help them make more intelligent decisions. Given its easy-to-use interface, SQL Server 2005 will be more likely to be used by the managers who need critical corporate data. Including as much functionality as possible in one tool will help ensure that customers stay with the Microsoft-based Flowfinity brand.
“We see it as a very important competitive strategy for us. Once we embed it and get customers to use it, they will continue to invest in our solutions. It also creates a whole wave of opportunity for our partners, because they can use the SQL Server business intelligence tools to sell reporting services to their customers,” says Mikhailov.
Microsoft Windows Server System
Microsoft Windows Server System is a line of integrated and manageable server software designed to reduce the complexity and cost of IT. Windows Server System enables you to spend less time and budget on managing your systems so that you can focus your resources on other priorities for you and your business.
For more information about Windows Server System, go to:www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem
Microsoft Visual Studio 2005
Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 is the world’s most popular development environment for designing, developing, and testing next-generation Windows-based solutions and Web applications and services. By improving the development experience for Windows, the Web, mobile devices, and Microsoft Office, Visual Studio 2005 helps organizations deliver a variety of solutions more productively than ever before. Visual Studio Team System expands the product line with new software tools that enable greater communication and collaboration throughout the development life cycle. With Visual Studio 2005, businesses can deliver modern service-oriented solutions more efficiently.
For more information on Visual Studio 2005, go to: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/
Acquire Visual Studio: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/howtobuy/
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: www.microsoft.com
For more information about Flowfinity Wireless Inc. products and services, call (604) 878-0008 or visit the Web site at: www.flowfinity.com
