Rationale Behind the AppBuilder
The AppBuilder evolved around two key concepts. The first, a business need for collaboration tools to be centered around the context. The second, the need for developers to assemble custom web applications quickly.
Need for collaboration tools to be centered around context
Communication and collaboration tools within the organization have steadily evolved based on technological advancements. We feel that we are at the cusp of the next shift that will make collaboration seamless and ubiquitous.
Most online collaboration tools and platforms are stand alone. Tools ranging from Webex to Sharepoint let you collaborate as long as you bring or upload the context to the platform. Users are tired of juggling between multiple applications, copying and pasting content or emailing information to generate a discussion. We faced the same challenges described above, when engaging with clients or having internal discussions and the idea of being able to seamlessly collaborate was born.
The AppBuilder addresses this problem by allowing you to build applications that can access or create collaborative workspaces right from your application. Users will now have the ability to collaborate in realtime using video and chat within the context of an existing work flow and data infrastructure. Such applications built with a tight integration to realtime collaboration methods can provide significant productivity gains. More importantly, as tacit information is collected within the context of the application, valuable insights can be derived depending on the type of the application.
The need for developers to assemble custom web applications quickly
Developer have to answer the age old question – Use an off-the-shelf solution or build from scratch? Either option has its merits and demerits. Most off-the-shelf products or lately SaaS products come ready to use. They also include a set of screens, work flows and database structures that can be customized and extended. But in reality most developers spend majority of their time retrofitting the enterprise needs by working around the built-in database and work flows. Building from scratch has its own challenges of time to delivery and the additional effort required to build a custom solution.
As a system integration firm we’ve grappled with the buy vs build decision many a time and decided that the solution we created would give the developers the best of both worlds - the off-the-shelf benefit of ready to use plugins and the freedom to implement the solution as they see fit.
The prefabricated plugins are structured for rapid assembly of applications. We make no assumptions about your database structure or your information flow. Developers are free to build or attach any data model or external data store. We provide you all the required software infrastructure to get you started and provide the flexibility you need to innovate and customize. We also offer set of pre-assembled starter applications. These sample applications will get you very close to to the final application. Developers can either extend and customize it to meet the user needs or use them as a reference.
We firmly believe that by using the Collaboration AppBuilder you can develop collaboration-centric applications in weeks instead of months and gain significant productivity gains through seamless contextual collaboration, within and external to your organization.
For more details please contact us at:
