EMEARIA.EU

North Netherlands Pop or Ria - Ecosystem ?

When I just started with Macromedia launching Flex 0.0 enterprise business unit, I was looking for enterprise system integrators who used to work with Flash Dreamweaver, had Java experience and were building enterprise apps. I came across The Factor E, a RIA full service house from the North of the Netherlands.

Creative director is Thijs Helfrich. I knew Thijs from my early schooldays in an average city in North Netherlands. At that time Thijs was lead singer in a ''famous band" Weekend at Waikiki, my best friend Jelke Haisma played the drums. The North of the Netherlands like that of the UK always had the best innovative bands and there was a lively life punk & new wave scene with, The Toilets, The Visitor and It Dockumer Lokaeltsje.

Long story short, I had not seen Thijs for about ten years, but our interests had crossed again with full speed. Thijs was building RIA's for several years with his team (at that time smart Folkert Ringnalda MD & brilliant conceptualist Marc Schipperhein later Technical Director of Ogilvy Netherlands).

One of the RIA applications was for the Healthcare Organization Tactus to create an Alcoholic Online Treatment portal, where addicts and professionals run through a partly remote programme. Later The Factor E developed the corporate site of Global Fortune 500 AKZO with Flex.

Thijs is also par-time professor at the NHL University in multimedia design. Design teaching is like a 'guilds-teaching', a new generation of designers is now trained by experienced RIA creatives in Web 2.0 and Flex. What interests me most is that naturally an ecosystem, like that of the independent music scene is established around UI creation and Web 2.0

That scene you can see at: Niels Bruins blog , Wietse Veenstra's blog, Raymond van Dongelen and if you browse further at several others sites from the North Netherlands Web 2.0, RIA scene.

PPM market needs Enterprise RIA's

The PSA (Professional Service Automation) and PPM ( Project & Portfolio Market) has started really several years ago. It was all about Managing Projects and Product sets easier and get rid of these spreadsheets. Who does now remember any of the hot companies of the end of the nineties like Evolve and Novient? Also Document Management (DM) vendors like Open Text started with a embedding PPM functionality to their standard Livelink software with Novare.

Two years ago I had a workshop with some key members of EMEA's Accenture's GACT (Global Architecture & Core Technologies) team. One of the discussions was they needed a new interface for Sap APO, Sap's Project Management Product, (Sap Advanced Optimizer & Planner).

In the same meeting Accenture mentioned that a better front end for Sap Business Ware House was one of their major requests they got from customers. They just could not work with the Sap GUI. OK we understood that and this resulted finally with the Visual Composer app with embedded Flex.

For the PSA/PPM market there is not a standard solution for a better interface yet. Still project management UI's are in general awful.

In the search for RIA Enterprise Flex apps I stumbled on the people from Webreakstuff. They say they have created part of the front end for their Go Plan in Flex. This would be extremely cool. We have seen now several CRM apps., even a full front end for Siebel, and several calenders being written in Flex. Now lets get something attractive to manage our real projects and portfolio's.

Flex Showcase :: January 18th :: Antwerp

3 renowned interactive agencies show you their latest Flex work. DAD, Nascom and Mediacatalyst will tell you why they chose Flex and how they convinced their clients, which difficulties they came across and how they fixed it.

During this session you will see front- and backend (with code samples) of 4 real life Flex cases:

• Belgacomtv.be by DAD
• My Club Vaio by Nascom
• Sony Ericsson by Mediacatalyst
• Schiphol Airport (Nomos) by Mediacatalyst

When? Thursday January 18th 2007
Where? Crowne Plaza hotel Antwerp, Belgium
How much does it cost? Registration is free but required!
Where do I register? www.mmug.be/meetings

Flexgala E-Seminar on Flex Data Services

For our weekend study hour on EMEARIA:  Marco Casario http://casario.blogs.com/ the key Flex evangelist in Italy publishes about the first eSeminar meeting event of FlexGala, the Italian community. Charles Bihis, who introduced the Flex Data  Service and gave an overview of Apollo.

Look at URL for the Adobe Connect viewing (the recorded Live meeting) "Understanding Flex Data Services" (English).

Italy is one of the advanced adopters of Flex in Europe within the Enterprise and Development community. In the past companies like E-Tree, with at that time good friend Paolo Pegurri cs., developed before the existence of Flex in Flash groundbreaking commercial consumer sites like Benetton (ATG+Macromedia), now we see great applications build with Flex from a new generation of developers.

Again a form of top class craftsmanship, design and creativity.

Presentations of Adobe Business event posted

We've posted the presentations of our Adobe Business Connect events online. This event was targeted at business managers and IT managers and included great case studies by customers (not all in English) in the Benelux region. I've posted direct links to RIA presentations below:

• Slides Robeco on their product selector solution and why they choose Adobe Flex
• Slides SNS Bank on why they have online live customer mortgage advisors using Adobe Breeze
• Slides Joh. Enschedé on their Amsterdam Airport Schiphol noise monitoring solution
• Slides Dexia BIL on why they have made Adobe Flex 2 a part of their IT Strategy
• Slides Belgacom TV on their vision on consumer portals and how they implemented it using Adobe Flex 2 for their BelgacomTV portal

There is more on SAP Interactive Forms, LiveCycle and Acrobat on the Amsterdam and Brussels edition pages.

Phone selector by Sony Ericsson

Check out the phone selector by Sony Ericsson, all done in Flex 1.5 by the Dutch department of MediaCatalyst for all countries where SE is active. Build as a true multi-language application.