+49 661 9642 - 0 info@business-app.com

What will you choose? – Cloud or Server?

by | Oct 10, 2016 | General, Tips & Tricks

“To Cloud or not to Cloud“:

Cloud, this is a term that is often heard. Whether it’s Microsoft’s advertising campaign “in the cloud!”, or from Apple, whose iCloud is published everywhere. On your way to work, you can see endless posters everywhere that say nothing but “cloud computing”. Most people do not know what the cloud is. For most people, the cloud is a synonym for the Internet itself, and when you talk about SaaS products, its basically right. But when it comes to cloud computing, it is more complicated.
Cloud or Server? Pros and cons. What will you choose?

“In the field of information technology (IT), cloud computing provides new prozesses for providing IT resources. Resources that support companys in electronic data processing (EDP). For example, servers or software applications. “

For many users and companies wonder: Are we going to go into the cloud? Or do we keep our data and applications on our own servers?

When you start a new SaaS project, you usually have some minimal requirements. You will need a web server and probably a database server. At the beginning a small number of users will use the application, but the number of users will rise more and more. The number of users will determine the load on the server, and the server data will determine when the maximum number of users is reached.

So, where to start? With a dedicated server or directly to a cloud server? Here you find decision support:

Cloud Pro

• Don’t have to buy / maintain hardware
• Unlimited instance scaling
• Unlimited memory scaling
• Dynamic scaling
• You pay for what you use
• Redundant

Cloud Contra

• Bandwidth limited and expensive
• Memory is expensive
• SQL memory is expensive
• Lower performance in many cases
• Lack of control

Server Pro

• Full control
• Planty storage space
• Cost-effective storage space
• Bandwidth is cheap
• SQL memory is cheap
• High performance
• Room for growing

Server Contra

• You always pay for the maximum performance
• Limited physical space
• Physical scaling limit (vertical)
• Hardware error
• Non-elastic
• Configuration and administration

Costs for a cloud and server

To define the costs of setting up a cloud server is quite difficult. Each platform has different pricings and other factors that determine the cost.
A dedicated server in a datacenter is easier to calculate, the cost per month for a decent server (quad-core xenon, 4 GB RAM, 500 GB disk, Linux OS) is about 150 € per month.
In comparison, a much weaker small cloud with Microsoft Azure (1.6GHz CPU, 1.75GB RAM, 100GB of memory) would cost about 60 € a month, with less than half the server’s performance.
The important difference is that you may not need all of the power that the server provides, so you could save 90 € per month until the number of users rise on your application.

Cloud or own server

Whatever your decision is: with Business App, you have all the freedom in the platform choice. Choose whether your applications run on your own server (on premise) or in your preferred private or public cloud (e.g., Amazon, Azure, Telekom, Google). A change is possible at any time. Business App leaves you all freedom to make the right choice.
Get more information about all the features of Business App

Report Engine for everything important

by | Sep 22, 2016 | Features to fall in love, General

Save money and resources with regular reports:

Without financial controls, businesses lose money, potential and resources. This means that payments and their origins are not really examined and that there is in fact no possibility to study them transparently. The resulting figures and key indicators continue to develop accordingly, in a way which could be decisive in terms of success or failure.
In the course of a normal working day, it is often the case that important information cannot be viewed simply and clearly, as there is no time to use a complex report engine to turn data into a useful analysis. The data and figures however often contain significant content which above all must be taken into account when making strategic decisions.
Typical questions with which meaningful reports could help include:

• am I reaching my goals?
• what is going well and what is going not so well?
• which resources could be saved or better used?
• what needs to be optimized?
• which processes could be improved?

In all departments such as marketing, production, development, services etc there are processes, which must be monitored and checked. Data records normally need to be summarized in a planning or status report or in a short analysis, in order to be able to effectively react to needs, requirements or calculations.

Decisive reports for all that is important

In order that the information needed is precisely that which is analyzed, a simple but quick report engine is necessary. Business does exactly that. In Business App there is already an integral report engine, with which it is possible to quickly and effortlessly evaluate and analyze the desired data. From a view you can launch a report using a control element and then simply save this in your application. This allows for data selected in a view to be passed through to the report.

Software Integration

by | Sep 13, 2016 | Features to fall in love, General

Working together with other applications:

It’s not always easy to integrate software into a business that already consists of a number of other programs and applications. E-mail clients must be integrated, along with for example programs for documentation and spreadsheets, to provide an integrated whole in order to make it easier to do business.

Office applications are here to stay

The average office worker spends 1,267 hours a year using office software, according to the results from a study carried out by the German company Made in Office. This means in 92% of cases the office software from Microsoft. A normal office worker spends 72% of his time working with office software.

It is therefore essential that all programs and applications which you use are able to work together as a single, comprehensive system. This means that data can be easily transferred and connected processes can be monitored.
For total customer care a unified working environment is essential.

The solution for your software integration needs

Business App works seamlessly with all MS products, such as MS Office and Office365, even in the cloud, in Sharepoint, Outlook etc. Open interfaces provide simple integration with external applications.
This makes it easy to integrate all those products which you need everyday.
Business App also supports 14 databases such as MS SQL, Oracle, PostgresSQL, all of which can be used without the need for code modifications.

Integrating your software is child’s play! Learn more about it here!

Application Designer

by | Sep 7, 2016 | Development, Features to fall in love, General

“Programming for non-developers” with the Application Designer:

Programming and generating applications can be very time-consuming. Complex processes and chunks of code are required. It is normally the case that a whole team of developers works for several months on a typical application.

What exactly happens during programming?

Programs are formulated (“coded”) with so-called programming languages, for example C++, Java and so on. The necessary requirements and algorithms are translated by programmers into one of these programming languages. Today programmers can call on the support of code generators, which are able to generate part of the required code automatically. The testing and documentation of the software is also part of the job of the programmer.
In most cases the design and the creation of the programme run in parallel. In bigger projects the design and the programming (often called implementation) follow one another. But even in this case, the programmer turns the design requirements into program code.
Despite the vast amount of code, programming remains a creative act. Although the design specifies a certain functionality, there are many different ways to implement it. Even the ability to imagine how the code is going to look later, requires creativity.

Creativity instead of long lines of code

Using Business App also requires creativity, but here you can achieve what you want without any programming – thanks to the Application Designer. Business App gives you a drag & drop editor for generating the application. From settings, to the tables, forms and views right through to modules, security and languages, you can put it all together quite simply. Without any knowledge of programming and without a single line of code.

Use and modify ready-made applications

And in case you are still unsure how to proceed, the Application Designer offers a number of ready applications which you can adapt to fit your precise needs. For example, applications for managing contacts, machines, correspondence, property, contracts and much more.
Your creativity knows no bounds, even if you have never studied computing science.

Too good to be true? Let us show you!

Email Integration

by | Sep 6, 2016 | Features to fall in love, General

Email integration – an essential part of the working day:

We can no longer imagine doing business without emails. Every day several million are sent and received. This means it is easy to lose sight of important information. Activities with your customers, partners and co-workers don’t work as well as they should, if at all.

40% of working time is wasted on searching emails

The problem is well-known: time runs through your fingers and before you know it another working day is done. Every day there are tasks, deadlines and important discussions which must be well-organized in order to be successfully concluded.

Sales opportunities are the basis of success for most businesses seen for example in the form of yearly turnover, and they are therefore one of the main pillars of the business structure.

But what if, just before an important meeting, you can’t find an address or other essential information in the chaos of your emails.
Or if a key deadline cannot be met, because your co-worker has no overview of the activities and can’t lay his hands on the relevant emails?

In this way you lose several hours a day just searching for emails with important customer data, contracts etc, and this increases the risk that sales opportunities, tenders or orders won’t be followed through successfully.

Many businesses believe in having an application which integrates e-mail functionality, and which provides them with an overview of everything which is important, thereby allowing more time to concentrate on the things that matter.

Perfect: emails accessible with a single click from your application

Store important emails from Outlook with single-click technology from Business App. Important data such as activities, article numbers or product data can be seen in advance in Outlook, so you are well-informed and prepared.

Business App provides you with the necessary overview and supports you in securing the success of your business.

Just what you are looking for? Then learn more here!

From .Net to Business App

by | Aug 26, 2016 | General

Microsoft Framework – an Overview

Microsoft Framework is very popular and since the first launch of the platform Microsoft .Net in 2000 there are a lot of different versions available.
.Net consists of plenty frameworks of whom the .Net Framework – as the most popular one – is often used synonymous for .Net as coding language and development environments with automatic memory management.
The main purposes of the Microsoft Framework are object-orientated software development and component-based development approaches. Through design patterns that are used in the Microsoft Framework, the structure of the application gets influenced. The Microsoft Framework provides reusable common structures which developers can use in their applications and extend them so that the program matches with their individual requirements. By pretending the architecture of an app, the Microsoft Framework is defining the control flow and the interface of concrete classes which the developer has to create and to register.

History of .Net

In June 2000 Bill Gates presented .Net Vision and in July of the same year CDs with pre-versions of Microsoft framework and Visual Studio .Net were circulating. The official notion of .Net followed two years later, in 2002, including the development environment SDK. Till 2005 there were more and more improvements until Visual Studio 2005, which was released first in December 2005 in a German version of .Net framework 2.0. The current version is 4.6, which was released in 2015.

Different types of Microsoft Framework

Microsoft is offering different forms of its framework: A pure runtime environment including necessary class libraries, costless SDK for developers or as a charged integrated development environment (IDE) in form of the MS Visual Studio .Net. Beginners can use the free MS Visual Studio Express Editions with constraints towards the charged standard or professional variant.

Offshoots of the Microsoft Framework

There are different offshoots of the Microsoft framework:

  • .Net Compact Framework: For handheld devices or mobile phones, which are running Windows CE or Windows Mobile there is a functional reduced version of the Microsoft Framework. But the development for these devices is just possible when you are using the charged Visual Studio .Net.
  • .Net Micro Framework: In 2006 the .Net Micro Framework was introduced. It is an again restricted version of the .Net Framework especially for embedded devices. Depending on the platform, the its size is between 512KB and 1MB and it runs directly from the ROM or the flash-memory. .Net Micro Framework is working as a system software but can also be installed on an existing Windows system software.
  • Silverlight: Including a massively reduced subset of the Microsoft Framework, Silverlight mainly allows web browsers to run Rich Internet Applications based on WPF. Normal programs based on WPF are web-enabled indeed, but they need the complete .Net 3.0, which is currently just available for Windows and not for Mac OS or Linux.
  • .Net Core: Publishing and hosting 2014 a subset of the reference source code repository is the base for upcoming, modular built .Net Framework 5. It allows an involvement of the community and was transferred by Microsoft to the 2014 founded .Net foundation. Through the MIT-licence there are no constraints as the source code of .Net Core should be used.

Business App – the new Microsoft based Framework for professional Business Applications

Business App is a new .Net based development platform for professional business applications including a well-engineered application designer and a backend framework with libraries and components tested and ready for use, that usually have to be redeveloped for every application.
Some of the highlights of this new Microsoft Framework are:

  • 100% offline functionality as you can use it everywhere, even without a connection to a server
  • Ready-to-use modules as forms, views, data structure, navigation
  • 14 supported databases, also open source
  • Top performance for millions of datasets
  • Ready-to-use rights- and role-concepts
  • Integration of MS Office / Office 365 – even in the cloud
  • Working on every device in the browser
  • Integrated text processing, spreadsheet and report designer
  • Open interfaces like ODATA, Webservices or REST

More on Business App