Adobe Flex Platform – A leading solution to build Rich Internet Applications (RIA)

Today, there is a high demand for Rich Internet Applications (RIA). RIAs combine the maturity, stability and scalability of service orientation with state of the art presentation layer technology to create the next wave of web based distributed applications. RIA applications are defined as the combination of beautiful aesthetics and the feel of desktop applications with the accessibility feature of the web applications. These applications include several features which counter the disadvantages of traditional websites. For an end user, RIA applications serves the best of client-server and web technology, making it imperative for all the small and mid-size businesses, large scale enterprises and even government entities to adopt.

RIAs are implemented into a working system to provide better results to all visitors. These applications are designed, executed and implemented with a view of increasing the overall productivity of the website. By adding RIAs, website developers append a number of flexible features to a website and make it more vivid and alive. With RIAs, websites become more appealing, interactive and responsive and hence have become cutting edge solutions to enhance the way a business operates.

Currently websites and desktops are rapidly moving in the RIA application development direction. Flex development along with many other platforms is used to add RIA applications to a website. In the present world many different types of platforms are available – Adobe Flex/Air, Google Web Toolkit (GWT), JavaFX and Microsoft Silverlight. Each have some of the best features making it difficult to judge which one is the best.

Adobe Flash and Adobe Flex applications are different from each other in many respects, even though they are developed in a way, look very much similar. Flex development is the process of using a collection of web tools, technologies and run time environments to create better RIA solutions. It includes Adobes Integrated Runtime (AIR), Flex SDK and Add-on Components, Adobe Flash Player Runtime, Flex Builder and Server Side Integration Service.

One of the reasons Adobe Flex has become so popular is because of its versatility. Adobe Flex is a software development kit (SDK) based on the Adobe Flash platform. Adobe Flex is used for the development and deployment of cross-platform RIA. The additional advantage of Adobe Flex is that it is an open source framework and by using flex compiler and adobe Flash builder RIAs can be easily developed. Flex development encourages better presentation of business information through rich graphical presentations, multimedia and animated displays. It is a program that can do extraordinary things. Adobe Flex can help build a website from the ground up or if you are trying to design intricate animations, design a highly interactive application or building interfaces for a variety of users, build on existing code or starting over from scratch.

Flex offers a number of remarkable benefits for both developers and end-users, including:

· Record development time due to powerful coding tools and extensive visual component library

· Innumerable good features make it ideal to develop enterprise level applications.

· Solution scalability and reliability due to a powerful and elegant Flex programming model.

· Flex-based solutions are easily re-designed or enhanced whenever it is necessary.

· Easy integration into a server application due to a high-performance data synchronization engine between the client and server sides.

· In-context interactivity due to video, audio, streaming, and messaging components.

· Flex components like Charts, DataGrid, RichTextEditor, ProgressBar, Accordion, Slider etc make Flex development very easy.

All this makes Adobe Flex one of the best RIA development platforms. RIAs have since been widely adopted and proven to deliver tangible ROI to the businesses that deploy them. Measurable benefits include higher customer conversion rates, increased user productivity and improved customer loyalty.

e-Zest’s (www.e-zest.net) dedicated team of (RIA) experts has extensive experience in building interactive & efficient Rich Internet Applications (RIA) development solutions to a global client base. e-Zest offers services that enable its clients to effectively communicate and share their ideas, products and services with their global customers. Our RIA services include Adobe Flex & AIR, Google Web Toolkit (GWT), Microsoft Silverlight, CURL, OpenLaszlo and JavaFX. We offer custom solutions according to needs of the clients.

 

Liferay Portal: Enterprise Open Source portal & Collaboration platform

Liferay Portal is the world's leading enterprise open source portal framework, offering integrated web publishing and content management, an enterprise service-oriented architecture (SOA) to facilitate application integration, and compatibility with all major IT infrastructures. Liferay portal is one of the most mature portal frameworks in the market. It has proven real world performance with Fortune 500 customers across industries. It offers many key business benefits that involve personalization, customization, and workflow. Liferay Portal provides within a secure, administrated framework, an ability to organize the potential chaos of an unfettered Web 2.0 environment. It empowers users with tools such as blogs, instant emails, message boards, instant messaging, shared calendar, social networking, social office, CMS, WCM, and so on.

 

Liferay portal provides you a single point of access to all your organization’s data, content, and information from both existing in-house applications (i.e., HR, CRM) and external sources. Liferay Portal is the only open source portal that works with any application server, database server, or operating system with over 700 deployment configuration. Liferay’s workflow engine allows organizations of all sizes to be more nimble. Flexible IT makes business processes more dynamic, modular, and adaptable to the demands of fast-changing markets.

 

Liferay Portal provides the highest value and lowest costs at every level. It also accommodates today’s global business environment with out of the box support for 22 languages. No matter how your processes change, Liferay was benchmarked as among the most secure portal platforms, so you can be always confident in the security of your data.

 

Created for enterprise use Liferay Portal provides a virtualized space where you can share, centralize and collaborate. Built with the end user in mind, user interface developed using Liferay portal is easy to understand even by technically ignorant user. Companies worldwide have been using Liferay Portal because of its high-end functionality, compatibility with most major application servers and database platforms, and scalability. One can consolidate, organize and access all the data and applications via a single point of access that the Liferay portal provides.

e-Zest’s Liferay Portal solutions, helps its client to minimize the critical operations and support for better customer satisfaction by allowing self-service capabilities and capable portal integration across business services. Our skilled Liferay team is available to satisfy all of your requirements for Liferay deployment, implementation, customization, consulting , Support, and any other services related to Liferay due diligence/requirement analysis, business analysis, Java scripting, implementation of a Liferay Portal, or changes or redesign for an existing Liferay Portal.

 

Creating Business Value with ERP

In the last decade, ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) have exploded into the global business landscape. The economic downturn took a bite out of ERP profits, but trends and impending product launches portend good things for ERP in 2010. The global recession had a major impact on the ERP software market in 09, but 2010 is shaping up to be a banner year in ERP. Many industries already have realized the need for ERP solutions, thanks to a number of emerging trends, as well as a pair of highly anticipated product launches.

 

An ERP package can streamline and automate the different important functions of an organization. A primary benefit of ERP is easier access to reliable and integrated information, elimination of redundant data and the rationalization of processes, which results in substantial cost savings. It enables decision-makers to have an enterprise-wide view of the information they need in a timely, reliable and consistent fashion. The system provides consistency, visibility and transparency across the entire enterprise. The integration among business functions facilitates communication and information sharing, leading to dramatic gains in productivity and efficiency.

 

The main difficulty that an organization faces while running a business is the need for quick information. For making any crucial decisions and for running the business, one has to have all required information on time. ERP improves coordination between all operations, it can simultaneously streamline the workflows and processes them according to the priority level hence giving benefits to the user. ERP in short is the business solution provider which helps an organization run its business smoothly and promotes growth.

 

ERP definitely helps any organization improve its business performance by reducing the lead time of the product that is being produced by any company. It integrates and automates most business processes and shares information enterprise-wide in real-time, thereby improving customer service and the corporate image. ERP provides business intelligence tools like decision support system, executive information system, reporting, data-mining and early-warning system thus enabling people to make better decisions and improve the business processes. ERP not only addresses the current requirements of the company but also provides an opportunity for improvement and refinement in the business process on a continuous basis. As a crucial evolutionary step in business, ERP was originally envisioned as a “one-size-fits-all” modularized software approach to the management of most of the core business activities. Today companies use ERP to manage product planning, purchasing and logistics, inventory management, production, vendor management, customer service, finance, human resources and many other basic business activities.

 

There can be no doubt in the promising opportunities and prospects of ERP in the future in both software and non software sectors. Whether the enterprises’ growth plans include buying and selling in the global marketplace, adding more talent to their teams, or expanding the services, ERP has the tools and the flexibility to successfully accelerate the business expansion and streamline existing business and operational processes thereby improving efficiency and productivity. Though there is always a threat of security, piracy, hacking of sensitive data etc, stagnation is a bigger threat to a business organization. So after taking the proper security measures, ERP systems can be a boon to every organization that is trying to survive in this competitive world and want to be the best in the business.

 

e-Zest defines ERP as an enterprise re-engineering solution that uses new business computing paradigms to integrate IT processes across company divisions and departments. e-Zest’s expertise and experience with large enterprises has enabled it to develop and provide unique and customized ERP solutions to its customers. e-Zest helps its clients deal with the associated challenges of support, upgrades, integration change management, and controlling cost and scheduling overruns.

e-Zest celebrates World Environment Day

On June 5th, e-Zest celebrated World Environment Day as a “Green Day”. e-Zest is concerned about the need for a safe & clean environment. We believe in to raise awareness, and contribute to this ever giving beautiful nature. We celebrated World Environment week from 1st to 5th June, many internal campaigns were organized to create environment awareness in the employees. This noble effort was a part of PRAYAS, a green initiative by e-Zest.

 

With this initiative e-Zest reached out to its employees and customers to plant Trees, clean up waste, use public transport and reduce use of plastic bags. We are also conscious of the hazards to the environment and inculcate the habit of car pooling and reduce carbon emissions. To make a contribution, 4th June was celebrated as “Non-Vehicle Day” by e-Zest employees. We successfully conveyed the need to act responsibly towards the environment. e-Zest encourages its employees to support the green theme of 2010 “your planet needs you!”.

 

 

GRC - Driving the Economic Growth

In the recent past the Indian economy has gone through major ups and downs and has also witnessed many controversies. It has led to enterprises adopting to GRC — or Governance, Risk Management and Compliance. In an economy like India where outsourcing contributes a major chunk to IT industry business, GRC has evolved from being desirable to unavoidable.

The three components – Governance, Risk and Compliance are connected, and yet at the same time they are separate entities that require their own strategic steps and procedures. With compliance requirements becoming mandatory, many companies have been aggressively discussing the implementation of Governance Risk & Compliance as a key strategy. The frequency and urgency of these discussions have increased significantly as global competition has shifted the speed of business into overdrive. To enterprises that are able to see the long term survival as part of their business plan, GRC is a welcome framework to operate in a dynamic world where IT runs just about every aspect of their business and the nature of risks and threats are also ever-changing.

The GRC market is gaining significant momentum leading to an enterprise-wide view of the risks associated with all lines of businesses and geographies. The GRC market in India continued to grow in 2009. The recent Forrester Research Report quotes that the GRC technology industry comprising of software, consulting and related services is currently growing at 24% year on year and is slated to grow from $2.6 billion in 2009 to over $24 billion in the next five years.

The enterprises are increasingly turning to GRC solutions to both improve visibility into their enterprise-wide risk posture and automate compliance processes. GRC helps meeting security best practices and protecting business-critical information. Combined with rich vulnerability data and compliance intelligence gathered across the entire IT infrastructure, GRC becomes even more effective.

Businesses are dependent on technology to automate processes in order to remain competitive and operate efficiently and effectively. However, these new opportunities create new risks and threats to the business. These risks and threats are both internal and external. All stakeholders like partners, client, shareholders etc would require that information systems must have adequate internal controls and are effectively addressing security challenges. This is where enterprises can leverage a well established GRC process to monitor security issues as well.

The enterprises today demand effective governance, including enterprise risk management, transparency, accountability, and optimized performance to ensure they receive risk free sustainable results. In IT business, GRC primarily focuses on information security and quality. GRC empowers enterprises to identify and analyze many risks that can affect the organization. Identifying preventive steps reduces the likelihood and magnitude of adverse impacts.

e-Zest offers a fully integrated suite of GRC solutions. e-Zest’s GRC competency team holds both business domain and technology expertise to deliver successful GRC solutions as per the clients’ needs. Our GRC services include GRC-Outsourced Product Development services, Custom/Bespoke Application Development, GRC Application Migration/Re-engineering services, GRC Product Implementation services and GRC Application/Product Integration with BPM/ERP Solutions. e-Zest’s On-Demand GRC solutions provides security features that strengthen the information environment without constricting flexibility and efficiency.