Archive for the ‘Company News’ Category

We just relaunched our website. The last redesign of integratechange.com was over 2 and a half years old and it was time to start fresh.

We wanted to use a new PHP framework to build the site (Konstrukt, to be exact), but, in the end, we decided that the effort needed to create and release a new cms for our site was overkill. Even if it would have been a great academic pursuit, it would have been laborious and way to time consuming. After all, we are busy with new clients and Event Clipboard.

So we decided it was time to revisit our old friend Wordpress. Within a 3 weeks, we were able to get a new design solidified and released. I have to say. I’m quite happy with the outcome. The site is lighter and we’ve reduced the content considerably from the old site. I just got the feeling that we tried to make our last site artificially deep. Most people aren’t going to read every page of our site and since the average read time was under a minute and a half (outside of this blog), we figured content simplification was in order.

So we took a bunch out, and we’re not going to stick it back in unless there’s a really good reason to. Honestly I couldn’t be happier. It’s web site catharsis.

Let us know what you think of the new site. For posterities sake, our old site is located here.

-Chris

In a very proud moment for my business, the New York Times featured Integrate and Event Clipboard in the small business section. The article is currently online and will be in the print edition on Thursday, October 9th, 2008.

Check out the article.

-Chris

We haven’t written a post in the past six months for good reason. We’ve had our heads down producing our first publicly available software product, Clipboard. After years of developing software for our clients, we decided it was time to produce something of our own. Early this year, we had the rare opportunity of time and decided to put it to good use. Clipboard, an amalgam of ideas based on our work developing budget and event management systems, stands as our first, but certainly not our last, entry into the business of Software as a Service (SaaS).

Clipboard is an online event and contact management tool designed to simplify the event planning process. Available via a monthly subscription, Clipboard gives users the ability to manage staff schedules, files, contacts, tasks, budgets, notes and more, all in one place and all online. For as little as $19.95/month (USD), event planners will have complete flexibility to manage their event-related information – including the ability to give an unlimited number of colleagues, vendors and/or clients access to specified events, schedules, files, and tasks.

On August 15th, we plan to launch the Public Beta phase of Clipboard – during which time a select few organizations will receive free access to the complete suite of event planning services available in Clipboard prior to its public release on October 15th. Those companies or individuals selected to participate in the Public Beta phase will receive 10% off their first year’s subscription. Participants are under no obligation to subscribe after the Public Beta phase; there is nothing to install and no credit card information required.

If you are interested in participating in the Public Beta phase, log on to www.geteventclipboard.com and sign up. We will begin sending out invitations with participation details in the next few weeks.

For our first software as a service (SaaS) product (Clipboard), we chose our technologies very carefully. Our choices, in the end, have proven essential to making a successful product. Our stack of technologies looks like this:

Operating System: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Server
This is almost always a no-brainer and we knew our operating system would be Linux. In particular, we’re running Red Hat’s Enterprise Linux 5 Server. There’s not much to say on this decision, because our managed hosting provider Rackspace made that decision for us…not that we would have made a different one.

Web Server: Litespeed
This was a decision we made with great care because our framework decision dictated that we choose an optimized solution for running Ruby. Of course, we could have chosen Apache, but there is a little bit of a memory dance you have to play when running Apache and Ruby. We’re no strangers to configuring or running Apache, but we’re always open to new and, possibly, better servers. There are many choices available, but we’re very happy with our final selection.

The Litespeed web server, while not exactly open source (there is a free version available) is one of the easiest web servers to configure and manage I’ve ever had the pleasure to deploy. Within four or five minutes, the server is up and running and is infinitely configurable and has proven fast.

Database Server: MySQL
This is definitely the de-facto database server for open-source applications. With few exceptions, MySQL is the first database server selected for web applications. We’ve been using MySQL server to serve our applications for as long as we’ve been in business. I, personally, have been using MySQL for almost 6 years. It was an easy choice.

Language and Framework: Ruby/Ruby on Rails
The choice of language was actually more difficult than we thought it would be. Our original inclination was to use PHP. We’ve got extensive experience using PHP, but we were looking for something even easier to develop in. At first, we turned to CakePHP, which is a fantastic framework for developing applications. But after running through a few early prototypes, we were a little leery about it’s viability in the long run.

We had heard about Ruby for a while, but it was definitely outside of our normal experience. However, we were impressed by the many large applications already running on Ruby-On-Rails. The most well-known is Basecamp (run by 37 Signals, the original developers of the ROR framework), the project management application we use to collaborate with our clients. With that proven track record, we started creating prototypes of Clipboard in Ruby and were incredibly impressed. First and foremost, Ruby is an elegant programming language and semantically matched our programming style. Even more so, Ruby on Rails is an impressive framework with a very complete and customizable set of functionality. It made development easier than we’d ever dreamed and resulted in 20-30,000 lines less of code when compared to applications of similar size and scope developed in VB .NET. It was a fantastic improvement on our productivity.

So, there you have it. That’s how we arrived at the decisions for Clipboard’s stack. For more information on Clipboard, go to www.geteventclipboard.com.

It’s been difficult to post lately because of the frenetic pace of¬†our most recent¬†production roll-out at Merrill Lynch.¬† The budget management system, called Account, went through extensive upgrades to cover even more budget management functions.¬† We’re particularly proud of Account.¬† These latest improvements not only increase it’s budgetary impact at Merrill Lynch, they also provide incredible global budget management abilities.

I’m a big fan of providing functions that require absolutely no thought and amazing impact.¬† For this roll-out, we added a currency conversion function that automatically converts any spending and budget into your local currency.¬† It also enables individuals¬†to set budgets for another region using their own currency.¬† For example, a user using US Dollars can set a 1.6 Million Dollar budget¬†for a European user¬†and their European counterparts will automatically receive their budget in the converted Euros.¬† While it seems¬†like a meager function, and makes complete sense when dealing with global budgets, it also feels that way for users.¬† More importantly, it¬†enables effective global budget reporting, heretofore acheived only through labor intensive¬†manual calculation.

¬†The 50 or so other functions are more than I can list in any meaningful context, but I’ll be writing up a full description and posting it to www.integratechange.com¬†after the project slows.

We’re all very excited about our latest project with Merrill Lynch.¬† As part of the on-going development¬†of Account, Merrill Lynch’s learning and development¬†budget management system, Integrate will be rolling out a new set of¬†features and functions aimed at improving the already stellar performance of Account 1.0.¬† Along with a better user experience and more robust reporting capabilities, Account will begin managing (in addition to the internal classroom spending) all executive coaching budgets and spending.

¬†I’ll post more information after the roll-out and the final features are ironed out.