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Minerva, Combine and Internet Light Industries embrace the Mendix Agile Business Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) solution to cost-effectively add new value for customers

BOSTON  – January 10, 2012 – Mendix, a leader in the PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) market, has signed three new channel partners, further highlighting the growing interest from systems integrators and solution providers in rapid software development strategies, providing them with a competitive edge to win new projects.

Combine, Minerva Computer Services and Internet Light Industries (ILI) have each embraced the Mendix Agile Business Platform in recent weeks, based on the recognition that meeting clients’ rapidly-changing business requirements demands a new approach to application design and delivery.

Combine provides SAP-based business solutions including implementation, upgrade and integration. Combine recognises the potential that the Mendix platform offers as a way to rapidly deliver and complete complex SAP implementations, including delivering those functions that often fall outside of a typical implementation, yet deliver highest user value and satisfaction. This blend of Mendix and SAP know-how will enable businesses to maximise their investment in SAP and in turn deliver on its full potential.

Minerva Computer Services is one of the foremost resellers of business software and network services to SMEs in the south of England, providing best-of-breed solutions in the areas of accounting and business management, customer relationship management, service management, retail and manufacturing, across a wide range of industry sectors. Minerva is skilled in using modern development platforms which it uses to develop bespoke extensions to ‘out-of-the-box’ software for its clients. Its strategic partnership with Mendix takes this approach to the next level, accelerating Minerva’s speed to market with relevant solutions for its customers.

A third partner, Scotland’s Web innovation company Internet Light Industries, is using the Mendix PaaS to deliver broch, its new Life Management Hub, a web-based product that puts consumers at the centre of their digital information and gives them the ability to manage and use it effectively. As a Mendix user, ILI quickly saw the technology’s broader potential and signed up to become a partner in order to help other start-up technology businesses achieve similar time and cost savings with their own development projects.

Mendix solutions have great relevance to the channel today because they can be deployed extremely quickly and cost-effectively. A recent article in Computer Reseller News (http://www.channelweb.co.uk/crn-uk/opinion/2117455/agile) highlighted the value of agile development strategies for systems integrators and IT resellers. In the article, John Milway, UK country manager at Mendix, notes that agile techniques and technologies are “all about fast feedback to the business” – in contrast to traditional monolithic software coding where benefits aren’t realised until the product is complete – by which time the original requirements may have changed.

“With agile development, requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organising, cross-functional teams,” Milway notes. “This promotes adaptive planning, evolutionary development and delivery, and encourages rapid and flexible response to change. This is in heavy contrast to a highly regulated, regimented, micromanaged model of development known as ‘waterfall’.”

Alexander Willemsen of Capegroup! Alexander is one of those users every company wishes for. He has been a very passionate member of the Mendix Community from the beginning and helped with solving more than 108 questions regarding Mendix. Needles to say these are the people who know Mendix in & out. His feedback helped improving the platform in a significant way and therefore we are happy to hand over him the award accompanied with a good bottle of champagne!

The reinsurance business involves extremely complex, logic-driven processes that are facilitated mainly by software applications. These applications provide an opportunity for reinsurance companies to differentiate themselves. Nothing is more frustrating than missing great business opportunities because IT departments can’t respond fast enough, or existing systems are too difficult to modify.

Adding an agile layer on top of these rigid systems offers COOs and CIOs at reinsurance companies the opportunity to react quickly without employing large teams of developers. We call this layer a “change layer” because it enables rapid changes that offer immediate business value on top of an otherwise inflexible core system.

Inefficient manual process? Automate it. Disparate systems slowing you down? Connect them. Underwriters doing arduous tasks? It’s called a microflow; and it’s a logic-based process flow. Have a novel idea that will win more business, but no IT horsepower to implement it? That’s what your change layer is for. It allows you to build even the most complex applications 10x faster, with minimal input from IT.

Most of these applications are custom portals, and while you might think those two words equate to a whole lot of time and money, your change layer gives you the ability to ensure a rapid and significant ROI. The key here is that you don’t need to employ an army of developers to implement a new portal.

Most of the work can be done by business people, and in our opinion, it should be. They are the ones who know the problem and are likely to have an idea for a solution. We worked with Arch Re to help them get into the Program business by building a custom application that provides a more efficient mechanism for clients to report the risks subject to the contract. Click here to read the case study.

We’ve been advocating the Mendix feedback mechanism heavily ever since the release of Mendix 3.0 in 2011. We knew it was the missing link between people using apps and people making apps. You probably know what it is and how easily it aligns your apps with the ever changing needs of business people, but so far the Mendix feedback loop has only been available to those of us with both a Sprintr account and an app running in the Mendix Cloud. With the latest update of Sprintr, you can implement the Feedback Widget into your company´s website as well to find out directly from visitors what they think of your site.

Here’s what to do to fix the glitches in your site within five minutes:

1. Get a sprintr account if you haven’t already
2. Paste a little code snippet in your head tag (like you -or your webmaster- did for Google Analytics)
3. Put the ID of a specific ‘website’ sprintr project into the code
4. Tweak the code: You can tweak the code to enable attachments, detect usernames and many more options to collect the tightest metadata possible

I’ll bet the minute you start using the widget you will get suggestions for improvements you could never think about for yourself. We use it for Mendix.com as well and within days we had great input…

• “Where can I find the Mendix Whitepaper” (so we made it very apparent on the product page now)
• “Your email states the event is on date X, while the site states the event is on date Y.”
• “Just finished watching the video on SAP integration, do you have one like that for Microsoft Dynamics?”

The feedback widget makes Sprintr different than any other project management tool out there. For the first time, you and your end users can collaborate in real time through your website or application.