Hi. Sorry again for the delay in postings. The autumn is such a hectic time ... but when isn't? In any case, we're looking forward to the rescheduled trade show in Miami. What a season for poor weather in the Gulf Coast region...
I do have some exciting development news to talk about today. A couple things are underway that take development in some different directions. So I guess exciting AND challenging is a better description.
We've announced the start of development on a new tool for mobile PDAs. As many of you know, we wrote a Palm Pilot application several years ago. So many changes have come along in the meantime with new technology and services that our existing application is really starting to show signs of age. As such, I'm happy to relay that we are building a mobile application for Pocket PCs and devices that will run the upcoming Windows Mobile operating system. This is a new version of Windows Mobile and, surprise of surprises, the Palm hardware devices will support it!
Like with desktop or network computing, there are companies that build mobile hardware and others that build mobile operating systems (OS). The Dell Axim is manufactured by Dell but runs the Windows Mobile OS built by Microsoft. The casual observer might not realize that their Palm device is actually manufactured by one company, Palm Hardware, and the Palm operating system which is built by a company called Palm Source. Trivia point - Apple tried this back in the day, didn't like it, revoked their licensing, merged the companies back together and still sell both hardware and operating system software today.
In any case, this is interesting, why? Well, because Sony, HP and all the other hardware manufacturers who sell PDAs, smartphones, smart watches, GPS units, etc. have had to choose which OS to support. This is why you have some Palm devices and some Windows Mobile devices (Pocket PCs). Now, they've finally started the process of playing together. Early next year, the new Treo, a device that previously only supported Palm, will run Windows Mobile. Aren't you excited like me?!
Ok, my point to all this is simple. We're a software company that uses Microsoft tools to build the great products we ship. Our data store is Microsoft, our development environment is Microsoft, we integrate with Microsoft operating systems from Windows 98 to Windows XP. When we built the Palm Pilot application back in ... 2001?... we had to buy a third-party tool that would take our Microsoft toolset and convert the information into something that would make sense on the Palm OS. Needless to say, it wasn't the best experience of my development life. 'Tedious' doesn't begin to do it justice and I'm thankful that my barber tells me I have thick hair because I pulled out plenty developing, tweaking and deploying the Palm application. Now, with the availability of Windows Mobile across many new types of devices, we can build our application directly in the family of tools and functions that we are most familiar with. So we're pretty excited about the capabilities this will give us. In many ways, the Palm application never lived up to my expectations. It was nearly impossible to do advanced functions when the basic items required so much work. As we look forward, I know we'll be able to extend the capacity of our Syrasoft Mobile application. This will give our clients much greater flexability for managing aspects of their business on mobile devices. Watch for more on this early in 2006!
Whew, I thought that was going to be about 30 words but I got a bit carried away.
In news that is less exciting for you but maybe even more exciting for Tech Support and our account management team, we have also been working on an internal tool called Rules Catalog. This is a very ambitious project that won't impact any of you directly for a long time! So why the hoopla? Because, indirectly, we hope the Rules Catalog will make account management much more efficient which translates into even better customer service. Rules Catalog is a comprehensive analysis of every business rule in our software. We have defined each rule that affects behavior in the program. To this, we can marry in a specific set of parameters for any client for every rule. Now, the biggest impact is to clients who have more than one facility running Syrasoft. If you have 2 sites or 200 sites, consistency is key. Your goal is to enforce consistency to the greatest degree possible. If you aren't running consistent business rules in the same software application, why even have the same application in the first place? Now, obviously many situations prevent 100% consistency. You may have a different tax rate in a different county, for example. However, the goal is the same - maintain consistency to the greatest degree possible. So our Rules Catalog has been designed with a great deal of flexibility. Our goal is to maintain a repository of every business rule for any client we choose. If a given rule varies from one state to the next, or one site to the next, the Rules Catalog will identify that and provide us with appropriate values for each rule.
In the first phase, Rules Catalog will serve Tech Support by providing instant analysis. If a manager calls with a question related to a business rule, the technician will be able to pull up the expected configuration immediately. This will save a lot of internal discussions, calls to regional managers, etc.
In the second phase, new setups for site acquisitions or new construction will more easily enforce the given rules for a client out of the box. This will ensure that each new site starts with the same rules as the existing properties.
Additionally, when the software changes or a client decides to modify how the application should behave, we can update the Rules Catalog accordingly and quickly distribute those changes to the affected properties.
Now, we do all of these things now and have maintained business rules for a long time. However, this project is more comprehensive then anything we've considered in the past. In fact, when Tim, Josh and I sat down and started the design process, we thought about all the mistakes we've made in the past and the challenges that we face in the current paradigm. As a result, we have a really exciting concept in place and the development has been underway now for several weeks. Vijay, our intern from Syracuse University, is the development lead on this. He's been successful in getting the foundation of the database and rules definition logic built. I think we're about 3 weeks away from our initial implementation for Phase I. We'll enter some information and train Tech Support on the tool so that they can begin researching rules in livetime while on the phone. As we work out tweaks and improvements, Vijay will start on the distribution concept.
We hope to eventually have a system that ties into our FTP site and only requires a manager to click a single menu or button to query for updates, download and install them. I know any of our clients who manage several properties will appreciate how much time and effort will be saved when individual managers aren't asked to install individual files or walk through wizards or follow links or open email attachments, etc. etc. etc. Really cool stuff and one more way Syrasoft is constantly trying to improve our customer service reputation.
So, yes, I've been busy. We've been busy. I'll continue to keep you updated. I've got to end this post and I haven't even mentioned Otisco - which we've committed to showing at the Vegas show this coming spring! We have a long list of addons and improvements. Stay tuned and I'll keep you up to speed on those!
