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iRise premier partner id8 recently wrote a very interesting blog post called “Simulate Anything“. In the post, Scott Nelson suggested we start thinking outside of the montior too feel the benefits of using visualization on non-web applications. He speaks about a visualization his team put together (see the video here) of a hand-held barcode scanner.
Given his desire to push the prototyping methodology way outside to web-based applications, he started simply walking around and finding non-web interfaces he could simulate with iRise. His thermostat and microwave both provided interesting opportunities to improve the user interface with visualization. Another iRise partner, OneSpring, has begun visualizing applications for the iPhone.
What types of interfaces could you see yourself visualizing? Me personally, I’d like to see my “all-in-one remote control” reworked 
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PRESS RELEASE ::
Web development & consulting firm joins iRise Alliance Partner program
iRise, the world’s leading visualization solutions company, today announced that RIIS (Research Into Internet Systems), a Detroit-based custom Web development firm has posted a record 400% growth in its business in 2008 due largely to the use of iRise visualization. RIIS focuses on building custom Web solutions for growing companies and has adopted visualization from iRise as a core competency to drive increased sales and improved client relationships. RIIS has also joined the iRise Alliance Partner program and will partner with iRise on application development projects in the region.
“The growth in our business has been dramatic and much of it can be directly related to our ability to communicate more effectively with our clients using iRise,” said Godfrey Nolan, founder and president of RIIS. “Visualization is a game changer for consulting firms that now have the ability to build stronger relationships with clients starting with proposal pursuits and continuing right thorough successful delivery.”
Some of the projects that RIIS has been successful delivering using visualization include:
- the development of a new, Web-based insurance tracking system that was prototyped in iRise and is now being developed;
- Java development for an interactive marketing agency;
- a variety of projects for a global telecom provider, including the development of a new eCommerce portal; and
- migrating law enforcement agencies from legacy systems onto a suite of Web-based records management tools.
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PRESS RELEASE ::
iRise Labs Launches Beta Program for Extending iRise Enterprise Edition
iRise today launched a private beta program for the iRise Extension API, an interface definition that will enable third-party development of a broad spectrum of integrations and extensions to the iRise Enterprise Edition platform. iRise customers and alliance partners will be able to leverage the iRise Extension API to extend the capabilities of the iRise platform and more tightly integrate it into their unique development processes and environments. At the same time third-party developers will also be able to create innovative commercial offerings for the iRise ecosystem; solutions that may then be co-marketed by iRise. The private beta period begins today.
iRise is seeking go-to-market partners to deliver commercial offerings in all of these areas, and others. Customers, ISVs and web developers interested in participating in the iRise Extensions API beta program should contact beta@irise.com for more information.
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Forrester analyst Carey Schwaber published a blog post this week titled “Which Vendors Have Made A Difference In App Dev?” - and iRise was nominated as one of her 5 difference-making vendors.
Carey started out her post by wondering which of the vendors she covers have had a broad-reaching impact on changing the way development works:
Forget which vendor’s tool has the best bells and whistles. Which vendor has really made the most difference? Which vendor has delivered products or services that have really improved project outcomes? Or resulted in worse project outcomes? Not just a single project outcome, but hundreds or even thousands of project outcomes.
iRise was nominated by Carey for:
Waking the market up to the limitations of textual requirements and providing an accessible and effective alternative.
In addition to mentioning iRise partner IBM Rational, Carey also nominated Sun (Java Platform), Junit (test-driven development) and Thoughtworks (agile practices pioneer) as game-changing vendors.
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We announced the immediate availability of the iRise simulation template for the iPhone at the Interop and Software 2008 conferences yesterday.
“iRise for iPhone”™ gives business analysts, user experience (UX) professionals and others a way to quickly prototype the look, feel and behavior of iPhone applications by making available pre-defined visualization widgets and templates that can be quickly assembled into a high definition mobile applications.
The template can simulate all of the iPhone’s standard menu icons and user actions, such as using sliders and zooming in and out of screens by “pinching” and “unpinching.” Application designers can use it to create custom buttons, manipulate the menu icons and define the effects of actions such as double-tapping a button.
Our alliance partner, OneSpring, developed the capability and is also providing the “OneSpring iPhone SimDK for iRise”.
Chuck Converse, a senior user experience architect at OneSpring noted, “Most applications, if you design them for mobile devices, are very text-heavy. The iPhone’s display capabilities give designers more freedom and a whole new set of choices.”
The full story is available from these related links:
And here is the YouTube video produced by OneSpring which demos the iRise iPhone capability:
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What are Rich Internet Applications or RIAs? Are they the panacea for everything that ails us? Are they the perfect vehicle for sexy, splashy sites? Do RIAs provide a better user experience?
Learn more about RIAs from User Experience expert Laurie Gray of OneSpring in this month’s Catalyze Community Webcast. Laurie will discuss some of the most common attitudes toward RIA’s and address the 5 biggest myths surrounding this exciting technology.
- Title – The Five Myths of RIAs featuring Laurie Gray
- Date and Time — Tuesday, March 18 at 11am Pacific/2pm Eastern
- Registration — Sign up at this link
- Recording – If you miss the live broadcast, the recording and presentation will be posted in Catalyze by March 20
Laurie has lived in the world of user experience since 1995 and is a user experience expert with OneSpring - one of iRise’s strategic partners and 2007 Partner of the Year. She also wrote an article on Best Practices in User Experience last year.
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Global sourcing is delivering expected cost savings in most cases, according to a recent study done by Deloitte Consulting, covered here in an InformationWeek article. Of the 300 companies surveyed, 70% were satisfied with their sourcing relationships, with 83% reporting an average ROI of 25%. But only one in three executives that participated claimed they are gaining important benefits from innovation or transformational ideas from these relationships.
I would suggest that visualization has to be THE most critical weapon of choice as companies move their global sourcing strategies to the next level. That becomes painfully clear in the survey when IT executives complained about “underestimating the project’s scope, higher-than-expected costs, and poor-quality communications, service, and reporting from their service providers” as the main reasons they drop their services partners. If you’re contemplating moving your global sourcing partnerships from maintenance and support functions to take on new application development, then communication is critical. Visualizing the final product ahead of time with something that all global stakeholders can fully experience can only help drive closer communication, better estimates, faster turn-around and lower risk to the project.
Visualization (in the form of CAD & 3D Modeling tools) has helped traditional manufacturing organizations build better cars, airplanes, computers, etc. in a global sourcing model. Time to market has been cut in half, with better quality products built in a fraction of the cost. It’s time that software catches up!
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This month iRise announced a partnership with Advanced Concepts Center (ACC), a consulting and learning solutions company. ACC offers technology education services to business analysts to improve employee productivity. We’re excited about this collaboration as it’s another step in normalizing visualization software as a global standard for companies building business applications. This partnership is, in part, a response to the evolving role of the business analyst (BA) in successfully communicating business initiatives.
In this new order where usability is king, the disconnect between business and IT is no longer acceptable. For many companies, the answer to this eternal question is the savvy business analyst; that rare bird who is both business- and technical-minded. According to Gartner Research there are 600,000 business analysts in the U.S. Like it or not, the BA is fast becoming a linchpin for which the success of business initiatives hinge. For iRise, training BAs on our visualization software is a natural fit. With ACC on board, the business analyst has even more training options available. We welcome them into our growing cadre of regional partners.
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Tata Consultancy Services (an iRise Alliance Partner) released the results of their first annual global IT survey recently. The biggest surprise was that business managers responded that they tend to accept IT problems as a norm and necessary evil. Would you?
Some of the survey highlights include:
- 62% had IT projects that failed to meet their schedules
- 49% suffered from budget overruns
- 47% had higher than expected maintenance costs
- 41% failed to deliver the expected business value and ROI
An interesting question looked at the reaction of business managers and the Board of Directors when IT projects have gone wrong:
The two noticeable differences between the US and Global results were that US Business Managers rarely look for an IT scapegoat and that they are less apt to accept problems as norm and necessary evil. They are also more likely to continue to provide support to improve IT for the business.
Personally, I find the results troubling and like to see some organizations challenging the norm with new and innovative ideas. Some choose visualization as a critical element of communication to prevent these failures. See some examples here.
TCS is working with iRise to mitigate risks on IT projects. As Vipul Shah, Manager R&D at TCS, put it, “Software development is an inherently complex process faced with the risks of miscommunication and the potential loss of control. iRise helps TCS mitigate these risks by visually simulating and validating requirements before development even begins. This strengthens the scope of our engagements and ensures the solutions and services we deliver to our clients are exactly as intended.”
The survey was conducted among 800 global mid-level and senior IT staff (23% of them from the US). You can read more about the survey and download detailed results from this link.
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I really enjoy seeing companies you work with almost every day 
(in my case, alliance partners), take a leadership position to embrace
what you have been evangelizing to the market. Last month, Capgemini announced the launch of the Rapid Design & Visualization (RDV) Lab. Though the Lab is now available nationwide through all their Accelerated Solutions Environments (ASEs), the RDV Lab has been in place for several year and iRise has been actively working with and a primary solution in the practice with many joint customers. The announcement was made at SOA World, an appropriate place since visualization is critical to understanding what business stakeholders want that can be enabled in a SOA environment (but more on that in a later post…).
The RDV Lab continues to expand Capgemini’s work in the field of simulation by using a methodology that combines the latest simulation and communication tools with new research on how people create complex software. Capgemini estimates that 60 percent of such programs – including ERP (SAP, Oracle, etc.), Web 2.0 and SOA initiatives – encounter rework following misunderstandings between project managers who write the specifications, and the engineers who build the programs. The announcement states, “The RDV is designed to help all parties get the software right the first time” – sound familiar? Absolutely, because Capgemini and iRise both believe that people, process and technology are required to really bring the full benefits of getting software right the first time.
Corey Glickman, the national leader for the Capgemini RDV Lab,
has been a champion for 
simulation and visualization for years
and an iRise user, speaking on different aspects at iRise User Conferences and interviews. Corey recently stated, “The RDV lets designers substitute images for nouns, animation for verbs, and a full–blown simulation for a phone book of instructions.” Is visualization really is the new language for designing software? I think Corey hit it right on the mark.
Capgemini has really taken the lead among global system integrators in piloting this effort years ago and now launching capabilities nationwide. For example, last year I presented Capgemini with the iRise Alliance Advantage Partner of the Year award for its substantial work (among other things) with one of our large manufacturing customers. Though the market for simulation is still young and in the evangelism stage, with the help of Capgemini, more companies will experience the benefits of visualization and share their success.
I look forward to sharing more examples of iRise alliance partners adopting the new language for designing software.
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