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Press Release
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With emphasis on increased usability for business analysts and IT professionals, iRise unveils iRise Application Simulator 3.0
EL SEGUNDO, Calif. -- September 23, 2003 - With the accent on usability for business analysts, iRise® (www.irise.com), a leading enterprise software and services company dedicated to bridging the communication gap between business and IT, today announced the availability of iRise Application Simulator™ 3.0, an enhanced version of its pioneering Application Definition platform.
Targeted at the Fortune 1000, iRise Application Simulator allows for the definition, testing and approval of Web-based business software before developers write the first line of code. Users validate requirements from a visually accurate, functionally rich and interactive simulation of the application that can be modified on the fly during feedback sessions.
The iRise Application Simulator platform substantially improves the accuracy, completeness, and consistency of requirements defined for Internet applications: the platform replaces the conventional requirements management and prototyping approaches that have failed to bridge the communication gap between businesspeople and technologists. Iterative validation with the iRise Application Simulator is a more effective way to collect clear, correct and complete requirements at the beginning of a software development project. This results in a host of benefits aimed squarely at improving definition and development processes and outcomes. These include:
- Ensuring that business applications built actually meet the needs of the business
- Enabling organizations to make better "build vs. buy" decisions
- Validating business requirements with users before handing them off to IT
- Finding missing requirements early
- Estimating projects more accurately
- Making review meetings more productive and thereby reducing their frequency
- Reducing the risk of offshore, outsourced development
- Stopping ill-conceived projects before they get started
- Reducing re-work, saving up to 40 percent of development cost and time
The newest version of iRise Application Simulator delivers dramatically enhanced usability features, permitting business analysts and other non-technical users to create fully interactive, data-rich simulations in roughly the same time as rudimentary click-through mockups or static screenshots. The iRise Studio component - a client application that allows collaborative creation of functionally rich prototypes for Internet applications - has been redesigned expressly for non-technical business analysts, who can now sketch out application page flows in seconds.
"iRise Application Simulator 3.0 is an easy-to-use, drag-and-drop environment for building web simulations," said Emmet B. Keeffe III, CEO and co-founder, iRise. "With 3.0, customers can gather requirements in the morning and produce simulations for stakeholder review in the afternoon.
"This comprehensive series of enhancements spans the scope of the product, from web page simulation to data usage to application behavior," Keeffe said. "Thanks to enhancements like WYSIWYG page layout, it is now easier than ever for business analysts to create application web pages without knowing HTML, use real sample data to give their simulations contextual meaning, and make their simulations behave like a finished application through drag-and-drop logic widgets."
Debuting in iRise Application Simulator 3.0 is TrueView™ technology, which makes mocking up the user interface of a web application as easy as creating slides in PowerPoint®. Simulations come alive in Version 3.0, with meaningful, realistic sample data from existing spreadsheets, databases or systems. In addition, common design elements and functionality can now be stored centrally for re-use across multiple simulations, to promote enterprise-wide application design standards.
Taking Simulation to a New Level
The benefits of simulation technology are well known in industrial manufacturing and other sectors. Microprocessors, buildings and aircraft are all conceived, designed and tested before construction begins. Given the long development cycles and high-stakes business bets of today's complex products and services, simulation is an effective means of validating ideas, concepts and details. Simulation is even more compelling for software development, whose construction is labor intensive and intrinsically error prone.
iRise's unique simulation technology makes experimentation with multiple scenarios a straightforward option, without the overhead of coded prototypes. Making changes or modifications is much easier and faster than ever, and the iRise platform allows more frequent and valuable iterations with users during definition. iRise Application Simulator's centralized, web-based repository ensures all participants have a current view of the simulations and requirements, which also serves as a stable blueprint for the development team.
"By making it even simpler and easier to use, iRise Application Simulator 3.0 provides business analysts with a more powerful and effective tool for quickly validating business requirements with end users before development begins," Keeffe said. "The result is a higher value business application at a dramatically lower cost."
About iRise
Founded in 1996, iRise® is a leading enterprise software and services company dedicated to B2IT™ communication -- bridging the communication gap that exists between business and IT. Using iRise Application Simulator, the first Application Definition platform, business users can now simulate and validate Web-based applications prior to development, dramatically improving their value while reducing development time and cost. With the same focus, its services group has successfully translated the needs of business users into Web-based applications for more than 100 customers on 250 engagements. The company is based in El Segundo, Calif., with an office in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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