Publisher Using Mendix to Rapidly Deliver Multiple Apps that Support Unique Processes across its Newsroom, Advertising and Finance Departments

BOSTON – September 16, 2014 – Constellation Research Inc., the research and advisory firm helping clients dominate digital disruption, today announced Wade Sendall, Vice President of IT at the Boston Globe, as a finalist in the fourth annual SuperNova Awards. The Constellation SuperNova Awards are the first and only awards to celebrate the leaders and teams who have overcome the hurdles of technology adoption to successfully introduce emerging and disruptive technologies to their organizations.  

When the New York Times Company sold The Boston Globe after 20 years of ownership, the IT team had to be completely disconnected from the Times’ systems and running on their own within six to 12 months. On top of replacing core systems, the team needed to find a way to migrate a dozen legacy Lotus Notes workflow databases as well as deliver new apps to move the business forward.

Tapping the Mendix Platform, the publisher has rapidly built multiple apps that support unique processes across its newsroom, advertising and finance departments. Examples include a newsroom corrections app that was built in five days; an imaging app for the Globe’s advertising team and self-service customers, which was built by one developer in 20 days; and a freelance management app with extensive workflows across multiple departments that was built by two developers in 30 days. Now the Globe’s IT team is in a much better position to enable the business to succeed in a competitive publishing landscape.

The 2014 SuperNova Award finalists were selected from a pool of more than 220 applications, and recognized by the SuperNova Award Judges as individuals who embody the SuperNova Award spirit to successfully and innovatively overcome the challenges of introducing new technologies to their organizations. The winners will be announced at the SuperNova Awards Gala Dinner on Oct. 29, 2014, in Half Moon Bay, Calif. The Gala Dinner will take place on the first night of Constellation’s Connected Enterprise innovation summit.

Comments on the news

R “Ray” Wang, Chairman and Founder, Constellation Research, Inc.

“I was extremely impressed by the quality of this year’s SuperNova Award applications. We at Constellation know advancing the adoption of disruptive technology is not easy. Disruptive technology adoption often faces resistance from supporters of the status quo, myopia, and financial constraint. We believe actors fighting these forces to champion disruptive technology within their organizations help, not only their organizations, but society as a whole to realize the potential of new and emerging technologies.”

Gottfried Sehringer, VP of marketing, Mendix

“The Boston Globe recognized that the only way its IT department could get ahead of rising business demands was to accelerate and democratize application delivery, empowering business users to collaborate and co-create with IT. Using the Mendix App Platform, Wade Sendall exercised great vision and drove an innovative, collaborative approach to building applications. We’re excited to see just how much The Boston Globe can accomplish using our platform to execute on all of its application needs.”

Selecting Winners

The SuperNova Award winners will be determined by a combination of public votes and judges’ votes. The judges’ votes will be weighted at 70 percent of the total.

About Mendix

Mendix is a leading low-code agentic development platform. For industrial organizations, Mendix’s full capabilities are delivered as part of Intelligence Center X, Siemens’ agentic enterprise system — turning industrial AI into measurable outcomes with shared context, orchestration, agentic development and governance.