This is all thanks to high-end PHP frameworks.

Agile application development is now not only easy, but it is also faster.

These high-end PHP frameworks come to your rescue when time is a big issue and you want to implement those high-end functionalities in your application in the least possible time.

Image credit: Flickr

This is thus the time that you need to look at popular PHP frameworks.

Without any delay, let us take a look at the top PHP frameworks that would help you develop agile and secure applications.

Laravel

Packed with a lot of interesting features, a tempting engine and other development related stuff, Laravel provides your application with a reliable and tested environment.

Painless routing, a robust library and powerful ORM along with simple authentication are some of the features that make Laravel the first choice for developers.

• Allows you to easily manage third-party packages with its tool composer.
• Has an easy to comprehend syntax.
• Eliminates testing hassles with its built-in unit testing.
• Allows you to manage client and server routes through Restful routing.
• Provides you with the flexibility to craft enthusiasts’ small businesses into big enterprise applications all in one go!

Phalcon

Named as one of the fastest PHP frameworks that the industry has ever witnessed, Phalcon provides you with an array of features.

They include asset management, security and translations, which make it one of the most preferred MVC frameworks boosted by PHP.

Consider Phalcon to develop micro application and high-end MVC applications with multi modules.

• Easy to grasp and learn.
• More cost effective than other frameworks.
• Allows you to use selected objects or a whole framework due to its loosely coupled nature.
• Has a powerful design.
• Has neat API.
• Allows you to easily create software through the direct injection feature of Phalcon.

Symfony

Symfony 2 is another PHP framework that you can choose to build websites and web applications. Witnessing 1,000,000 downloads till date; Symfony is currently backed up by an amazing support of 300,000 developers.

• Allows easy configuration with event dispatcher and dependency injectors.
• Allows for easy customisation as per your needs.
• Allows you to deploy a micro framework and there is thus no need to deal with the entire framework.
• Is highly extensible.
• Validate roles easily and helps you boost productivity.

Yii

Yii is another high-performance framework. The beauty of this framework lies in its features that allow you to focus on the code while all the messy work can be managed behind the scenes.

Although many tasks in Yii are automated, you might still have to dig through the framework a bit more to know it inside out.

• Is equipped with a powerful caching system for loading the web applications quickly.
• Integrates with third-party codes easily. And, guess what, the codes from the Zend and Pear frameworks can also be used in the Yii web application.
• Is a highly secured framework. It boosts some advanced security measures, such as injection attacks, cross-site scripting and input validation.
• Has RBAC-based built-in authentication support.
• Is highly compatible with Ajax and jQuery which allows you to create highly scalable and versatile UIs.
• Can easily be integrated with both relational and non-relational databases.

Zend

Zend is the preferred PHP framework if you want to build a high performing web application. Packed with secure coding tools, the Zend framework showcases various important features, such as extensibility and modularity.

• Has highly deployable API-centric applications.
• Follows an agile design methodology.
• Has a drag-and-drop editor.
• Has instant debugging.
• Includes PHP unit testing tools.

Things to Keep in Mind While Choosing a PHP Framework

• What do you expect from the framework?

Even though familiarity is an important element when choosing a framework, functionality should also be considered.

This is because a CMS might not be suitable for an eCommerce application. You must thus first relax and analyse your requirements. Only thereafter can you proceed to compare the myriad of options that are available to you.

• What about the documentation?

Always choose and go for a framework that comes with a lot of documentation and training. You never know when you might need it!

No matter how much expertise you have in a framework, it always appears to be hazy six months down the line. Under such circumstances, documentation comes to the rescue.

• Does the framework have an active user base and is it actively being developed?

Writing code that is not perfectly coupled with your chosen framework is time consuming.

At that time, you are left with only two choices: Stay with the framework and continue to do its maintenance all by yourself or simply do the coding again with a new framework.

Neither choice is favourable nor should you thus always take a look at the framework’s community and active user base before you settle on one.

Still puzzled about which one to choose for PHP web development? This table might help!

So, which framework do you plan to choose for PHP development?

The post A Definitive Guide to PHP Frameworks for Development appeared first on Classic Informatics.

They have both been major contributors to website and enterprise applications for many years now.

Python, Django, Ruby on Rails and a lot of others have challenged their survival.

But these two languages have always emerged stronger, all thanks to the feature set that they possess and the flexibility that they provide to developers.

PHP development and ASP.NET development have been in a neck and neck competition with each other for the title as the best.

And have thus forced CTOs and enterprise owners to make the difficult decision of which one to choose for their enterprise application?

So let us find out more about these two languages!

ASP.NET and PHP at a Glance

• ASP

Active Server Page (also known as ASP) is scripting language mainly used on the server side which was developed by Microsoft.

Image credit: Flickr

It is a more powerful server side language and hosts an array of features, including links to the backend, session, and state management, and handling request and response parameters.

A webpage that has been designed using ASP will include static HTML tags and dynamic validation using JavaScript or VBScript. Dynamic generation of HTML and CSS is also possible with ASP.NET.

How Does ASP.NET Work?

You request an ASP page which is on a server and the corresponding page fetches the information from the database.

This then dynamically generates the HTML code for you to present your requested data and it sends it to you to view in a browser.

• PHP

PHP is a scripting language. PHP is mostly found embedded with HTML code, or is even served as a standalone program.

It processes the code using an interpreter in the web server or Common Gateway Interface (CGI). PHP can also be used as a command line scripting in GUI applications. It has the ability to be integrated with various database systems.

ASP.NET Development vs PHP Development – Which One to Choose for Enterprise Applications?

ASP.NET and PHP are both versatile languages used in larger web application development and have the ability to scale a lot. Each has its own strengths to support your application.

The choice between the two should be based on your application and its environmental parameters, such as traffic, scaling, and cost.

• Business Size

The size of your business is an important factor to consider when deciding which language you should go for.

Firstly, PHP was essentially designed as a web language, while ASP.NET was crafted for designing enterprise applications.

Secondly, ASP.NET is easy at scaling and easily gears big projects, while smaller projects work better in PHP. Furthermore, ASP.NET has industrial strength, which provides robustness and power to your application.

• Time and Pricing

PHP is an open source language and runs on any open source platform which overtakes ASP, since ASP is cost-effective and requires larger resources and more support than PHP.

Time is also another big factor to consider. PHP is easy to deploy and develop. It is easier to install and set up on development machines than ASP.

• Lightweight

ASP.NET requires huge libraries to be integrated, while PHP is simple to use with basic options.

ASP.NET also only supports Internet Information Server (IIS) servers, while PHP supports various servers.

ASP.NET furthermore uses server space and accessing the data every time from the server makes its performance suffer.

Since PHP uses built-in memory, it is easy to access the data faster and so PHP stands at the top due to its faster execution.

Here is a quick comparison table that will help you better understand the differences between the two.

Both languages are good in their way. It is up to the business types to choose the one that is best suited for them.

If cost is not a factor and your application is huge, you can go for ASP.NET Development.

If you are a startup or a small-sized business where cost is a huge factor, it would be best to choose an open source language like PHP.

So which one did you choose?

The post ASP.NET vs PHP for Enterprise Applications appeared first on Classic Informatics.

A major reason for many developers choosing PHP is its wide range of developmental frameworks.

PHP frameworks enable you to build websites and apps of all sizes and complexity levels without having to start from scratch.

So, the massive growth of PHP-based web development can be rightly attributed to these excellent frameworks.

But, then again, the real question is which PHP framework is best suited for your needs.

While choosing the best framework can be subjective and based on your particular needs, there are few qualities that make a framework the best choice in many cases.

Yii and Zend are two frameworks with such amazing features and capabilities.

So, here is a brief overview of both these frameworks to help you decide which is the best one for your MVC development project.

Yii

Yii has been a popular choice among developers to develop large-scale and secured applications.

It was launched in 2008 and is one of the oldest PHP frameworks still going strong. Yii 2.0 is the latest version available.

This framework is suitable for developing secure applications with complex workflows. It is also great for developing CRM and CMS applications.

Yii is a high-performance, component-based PHP framework that is designed to make your MVC development fast and easy. It is flexible and includes a variety of features, including:

• Integration with jQuery,
• Gii module – a built-in code generator, and
• Active record – the ability to access databases as either Data Access Objects or as Active Records.

It has many other attractive features as well, such as caching, role-based access control, scaffolding, testing and authentication.

In addition, Yii has an active community that can help you with easy maintenance and support. The documentation of its code library is also good.

Cons

• A major downside, as reported by many beginners, is that it can be a little difficult to get started with Yii.
• Yii relies heavily on static methods and this may cause code complexities.
• Managing code for large platforms and sites can be difficult and you have to be extra careful in using Yii in such cases.

Zend

Zend has been a constant favourite for many developers and has been upgraded into the Zend 2.0 version. Many corporations, such as BBC, BNP Paribas and Cisco WebEx, use Zend in their projects.

Some of the great features of Zend 2.0 are:

• Modular approach – enables reusability and better flexibility,
• Service manager – a layer that returns objects as requested to be used in your own factories,
• Event manager – lets you attach and detach even listeners, handlers, trigger events and interrupt execution, and
• PHP composer – maintains the project libraries and version management.

Zend can also be used on a piecemeal basis: Certain components of Zend can be used in a Yii-based web application.

It follows a use-at-will architecture and has minimal interdependencies among its components.

It further supports multiple database systems and email delivery systems.

This framework gives you complete control over every feature and customisations are very easy. When the project involved is simple, development using Zend can be very fast.

However, for larger projects, using Zend tends to take longer.

Cons

Zend has a reputation for being hard to learn. But, in case of documentation, Yii seems to have better credits. The configuration options are also complex.

Let us take a closer look at the specialties of each framework to better understand them.

So which one are you going to pick? Do you have any questions or points to add here? Please feel free to leave your comments below and thanks for reading!

The post Yii vs. Zend – Why Use One of These for Your Web Development appeared first on Classic Informatics.

However, before you take the leap, you have to thoroughly weigh its benefits and consciously choose to migrate your website to a mobile app.

Previously, mobile websites were more predominant when browsers dominated the launch of many new eCommerce start-ups.

Browsers made the websites seamlessly fit in all kinds of handheld devices and users found it exciting to buy stuff on the internet using their mobile devices. The availability of the internet and the evolution of HTML to support rich media also enabled this transition.

So, many ventures have started to launch mobile websites to attract their consumers and thereby increase revenues.

With the present era of mobile devices being dominated by the app ecosystems, the prevalent question becomes whether or not mobile websites are indeed mobile and meeting its purpose.

Apps have been making inroads on many users’ lifestyles and its adoption for business is seen as a positive trend.

There are many benefits for businesses to migrate from the traditional browser-based mobile commerce sites to the mobile app ecosystem.

A few of these benefits are listed below to aid you in making a conscious decision to follow the trend.

Faster Access

Mobile apps are written on the handheld devices’ native operating systems, while the websites run on a browser and always depend on an internet connection to work.

So, apps are much faster than the mobile sites. This plays a critical role if you do not want to lose your customers due to a slow connection while waiting for the page to load.

An app can be designed more efficiently so that it performs all the processing offline and only accesses the internet when it is needed to close the transactions.

Available Offline

For a business to succeed, availability is a vital factor. If your website is down for a while or if your users find it too slow, then the revenues will start to dwindle.

Source: Flickr

The availability of mobile websites greatly depends on the availability of the internet for every little bit of work that it has to perform and for the pages to load.

However, apps work much to the advantage of the users because it can download the required content when there is the internet and can perform all the other processing using the handheld device.

This makes the user feel as though he/she is connected to your business all the time. It is magic that allures your users to ensure a greater reach and greater revenue for your business that has been running on mobile websites.

Personalised Services

A mobile website’s major goal is to educate users and market a product line on the web. However, apps have the ability to offer personalised services.

For example, if a mobile browser-based shopping site rolls out personalised services to users, then databases in the back-end is required for millions of users who access the site and the access to the site must be ensured quickly to cater to the needs of an online shopper.

However, apps keep the personalised information within the client device and perform their intelligence to fetch only the needs of the shopper!

Thus, it is much easier and quicker for apps to roll out personalised and customised services to its users.

Easier to Use

On the one hand, mobile websites typically run on a browser and require the browser to have updated plugins to play the content as per the definitions of the URL pages. The sites also have to fit all the different sizes of the different screens of the handheld devices.

Furthermore, rendering is an important challenge in HTML-based style sheets. On the other hand, apps understand the device in a better way to get the best performance out of it because they are written using the native interface of the underlying hardware.

This is evident in gaming apps where the graphics and the memory are more critical to ensure the best user experience. Mobile websites cannot match apps in the world of gaming.

More Interactive

Apps offer a much more interactive experience to the user than mobile websites do. This is because apps understand the user of the device and roll out personalised services.

By being interactive, the user is provided with a rich experience of shopping or gaming using the app on his/her device. This increases the engagement of the user with the app.

Also, due to the real-time speed and offline processing capability, an app can bring this interactive feature more effectively than mobile websites that run on browsers.

Tools to Aid the Migration

Now that you are convinced and ready to move to a mobile app, take sufficient care to have a smooth process. There are many tools and services available for migrating mobile websites to an app for handheld devices.

There are also SDKs available from the respective native operating systems from the handheld makers that you can effectively use to migrate websites to mobile apps. BuildFire, Onbile and AppMakr are only a few of such tools which do the job in an effortless fashion, keeping the look and feel of the website when converting it into an app.

The app also needs to be designed in such a way that it is easy to navigate. There are many designer tools available, including Como and SwebApps, to design the interface and the outlook.

It is important for businesses to embrace the change in the ecosystem to sustain the competition. Wiser decisions about migrating mobile websites to app-based ones will certainly yield benefits as described above and help to march ahead of the competition.

So, which one do you prefer? Mobile website or mobile app? Please feel free to leave your comments below and thanks for reading!

The post Mobile App or Mobile Website: Which Should You Choose? appeared first on Classic Informatics.

If yes, then Magento is sure to figure in that list of popular eCommerce solutions that have made lives easier for businesses to go online with their products or services.

Magento has been known to help businesses seamlessly build an online store across any category, customise it as per their changing needs, attract more customers and generate better sales.

This open source Content Management System (CMS) has been constantly evolving with new solutions and tools, due to which it has been trusted and utilised by more than 240,000 businesses across the globe.

This number is estimated to rise by leaps and bounds in the coming years as the demand for eCommerce increases.

So let’s check out the advantages offered by Magento, especially for small businesses, and compare it to other eCommerce platforms or CMSs.

1. A Customisable Open Source Solution

Magento (Community Edition) is open source and can be downloaded for free. Once installed, you are not restricted to the standard templates, but you can customise it as per the dynamic requirements of your business.

Image credit: Flickr

You can boost your eCommerce store with several new features and functionalities by installing Magento extensions that are available at the Magento Connect marketplace.

For small businesses, this customising option is pretty handy since the eCommerce needs of these businesses may be pretty specific.

2. Strong Community Support

To enjoy a smooth experience with any new tool or CMS, like Magento, that you haven’t used before, you will always feel the need to have reliable and readily available support.

Since Magento is open source, it has an extremely large and knowledgeable community of developers who constantly work on it to ensure it stays updated and secure. If you are stuck anywhere or face any issues while handling the Magento tool, sound technical help is available to you at an instant.

Such support is ideal for small businesses which may not always have enough expertise with Magento to handle the issues. They can easily rely on this Magento community support to get solutions for several issues.

Most of the problems that you may face, while using Magento for the first time, may already have been discussed with solutions at the community forum sites.

3. One-Stop Shop

The best thing about Magento is that you can manage it from a single platform and do not need different solutions for different purposes.

Image credit: Flickr

You can manage all customer records, billing activities, store inventory, and so on from one place (the admin dashboard). You can create multiple online stores from a single backend CMS.

All your eCommerce apps can be handled from a single database, which further increases your company’s efficiency. This makes it easier for small businesses, as they will need fewer resources to manage and monitor their online store.

4. Support for Mobile Shopping Experience

The world is witnessing an increasing trend towards online shopping for mobile phones. This has led many eCommerce businesses to switch their focus towards developing their online store apps or making their eCommerce websites mobile friendly.

The fact that the Magento platform offers multiple HTML5 capabilities ensures that your customers will have a superior mobile shopping experience.

5. Higher Flexibility and Scalability

With an open system architecture, the Magento experts in your company can create uniquely designed user experiences for various types of access devices.

You can have a fully flexible eCommerce workflow to meet the different business requirements of your company. In addition, this platform offers a higher scalability option at any point of time.

This means that your business can grow seamlessly with flexible eCommerce-based modifications and enhancements possible through Magento.

Comparison with Other Popular CMS

If you were asked about the most popular CMS in the world today, you would probably answer “WordPress”. There is no doubt about the overall popularity of WordPress, but it is not designed specifically for eCommerce.

To handle eCommerce requirements, you need to use WooCommerce along with WordPress. Similarly, if you want to design eCommerce stores using another popular CMS, like Drupal, you need to use Drupal Commerce along with it.

Yet, Magento is a platform specifically created for eCommerce requirements. It possesses countless eCommerce features and functionalities that give it a clear edge over other content management systems supporting eCommerce.

Magento is quite SEO friendly and you get the preloaded ability to give meta titles and descriptions as soon as you add products to your online store. You don’t need to install a separate SEO extension or plugin. Some other preloaded SEO features include sitemaps, URL rewrites and layered navigation.

For WordPress, you need to specifically download an SEO plugin, like Yoast, for SEO-related features.

A simple comparison table according to a Tomrobertshaw.net report , for the top eCommerce software in use across the globe is illustrated below:

It is clear that Magento leads the way for eCommerce software with a market share of almost 26%, followed by WooCommerce which is way behind with only 9.7% of the market share.

Now that you know Magento is the best eCommerce platform currently, you may be wondering about the ways through which you can opt for a suitable Magento development service provider.

You can do that by checking out the Magento community forums which are full of experienced Magento developers or you can find a suitable one via LinkedIn or Crunchbase as well.

You can also check out who has extensive experience in developing online stores using Magento and contact them to get the relevant services for your business.

So, what are you waiting for? Get started with Magento and grow your online business!

The post 5 Reasons to Select Magento for Your Small Business appeared first on Classic Informatics.

The best part is that CiviCRM is available for installation as a standalone software or as a component along with content management systems like Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress. It may also be installed as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).

Let’s take a detailed look at the benefits offered by CiviCRM, its features and how it can work seamlessly with a Content Management System (CMS) like Drupal.

Web-Based Synchronisation

CiviCRM is a web-based application which is a great advantage, as it can be easily installed and utilised by you with the help of an internet-enabled computer system.

It synchronises seamlessly with various CMSs for effective web-based relationship management, especially for school, church and other charitable or non-profit organisations.

As CiviCRM is developed by the community Hive Mind, you may not get instant direct support for any related issues. However, there are plenty of help forums that provide solutions for various CiviCRM based problems.

Key Features

Online Fundraising and Donor Management

It can manage and keep track of all the contributions or donations to your organisation from your constituents from a single screen within the application.

You are empowered to create customised web pages quickly in order to accept online donations. You also get access to updated details of every donation and relevant contact with no chance of data entry errors.

Online Membership Management

With CiviCRM, you can easily manage the online sign ups, renewals and membership summaries for your organisation.

It enables you to configure any number of membership types as well as customise membership rules and status.

It is also possible to create customised web pages for self-service membership sign up and renewal. You can break down the membership summaries by date (month), membership type, number of contributions, contact information and the total contribution.

Online Event Management

CiviCRM offers you the functionality of creating customised web pages to manage online events or meeting registration for your organisation and then track the number of people who registered as well as the number of active participants.

Online Mass Mailing Management

With this CiviCRM app, you can create or develop newsletters to be distributed to different members directly from your website instead of having to create the group mailing list manually.

It thereby saves a lot of time. You can keep your constituents engaged with timely newsletters for everyone or personalised emails targeted at only a certain group of members.

Thus, CiviCRM assists you with email marketing, social media marketing as well as personal email campaigns.

Integration with Drupal CMS

In comparison to other large CRM applications, CiviCRM may not offer a similar level of data analysis and reporting.

However, it does offer a free alternative to maintain data records of a wide variety of information related to the constituents of your organisation.

It can easily be configured to work with your existing business processes as well as seamlessly customised according to your specific business requirements. Furthermore, it is a free CRM component that is designed to integrate and work with CMSs, such as Joomla, Drupal, and WordPress.

However, it is more popularly known for its integration with Drupal. This is because Drupal provides most integration options for CiviCRM and because the Drupal community is more of a developer community, which can handle the technical challenges easily and add to the CiviCRM documentation.

Your website enables you to create roles for site users and grant them permission to execute different tasks, such as edit, view, delete, administer contacts or access specific information.

The Drupal permission settings determine which tasks a specific role will perform and what information it can access. They override any access control setup in CiviCRM, which means that if the CiviCRM settings restrict access to contacts, but the Drupal permission settings allow complete access, then the particular user role will have complete access to contacts.

The Drupal Views module enables you to display website content and CiviCRM integrates with it in order to allow CiviCRM data to be publicly displayed on your website.

When we tried to combine them together for a client’s website, we had to do some configuration, as our CiviCRM and Drupal belonged to different databases.

The Final Verdict

All in all, CiviCRM has several features working in its favour, especially if your business is a non-profit, advocacy or a charitable organisation that has a website CMS like Drupal. It does not involve any licensing fees and so you can add users without any incurring additional costs.

However, you do require certain technical skills to ensure a seamless setup and maintenance of this CRM tool.

So have you explored Drupal CiviCRM before? Do you have any point to share? Please feel free to leave your comments below and thanks for reading!

The post Is Drupal CiviCRM the Right CRM Interface for You? An Analysis. appeared first on Classic Informatics.

Tailored according to your specific eCommerce needs, this open source platform offers maximum performance and scalability, with advanced out-of-the-box capabilities, packed in a bundle of multiple editions two of which are Magento Enterprise and Magento Community.

Aside from the fact that one is free and the other is not, both Magento editions seem equally beneficial. Some businesses, however, prefer one to the other.

So, what is the difference between the two, what features does one have, that the other doesn’t, and how they perform against each other on different parameters is what we’ll discuss in detail today.

The purpose of this comparison is to ascertain which version is suitable for your organisation depending on what stage it is in, and future requirements.

Size of the Business

The first and perhaps the most important differentiator between the two Magento editions are the size and scale of the business.

Consider the amount of sales you make every month, the size of the inventory, the number of SKUs, and the market growth your business is experiencing.

With faster indexing process, speedy checkout feature, ability to handle large number of products, flexibility and better support for international business, Magento Enterprise is a real game changer in this scenario if you have lots of products or inventory.

Modular Code Base

On a core, technical level, though, those of you who are not afraid to get their hands dirty building and maintaining a website, Magento Community might be the best fit.

For those who need more control over the environment and need to leverage extensions and custom coding to meet your customer’s expectations, Magento Community has an amazing array of features that include code level access to files.

Unlike Enterprise or other Magento platforms, the Community’s code runs on your web server, and that ensures that your sensitive data and information stay secure and inaccessible to external agents.

Performance Enhancement

When it comes to performance enhancement, Magento Enterprise is an obvious winner. Every upgrade in the system is making this platform exponentially better and faster at re-indexing.

Unlike Magento Community that could take around 10 to 20 minutes to process a newly added product, Enterprise does it almost instantly.

Budget and Investment

If you are looking to start with an eCommerce solution on a limited budget, then Magento Community is your best bet.

Image credit: Flickr

It is relatively easier to set up and flexible for web developers and designers to work with. With a wide assortment of solutions within the edition and the ability to customise certain features without any cost, Magento Community is just the right solution for small-sized businesses and startups.

Even if some amount of investment is required in future development or modules, it will be far less than the amount of money required to develop an eCommerce system from scratch.

However, for those of you who need something more robust and unorthodox, and if money is not a problem and you want a more professional looking eCommerce solution from the start, then without a doubt, Magento Enterprise will win the race.

Comparison Chart

Here’s a comparison chart that we’ve designed to determine the right fit for your business with a sharp focus on the key differentiating elements of both the editions.

While all the current solutions that Magento is offering are beneficial for businesses, every edition is designed to meet certain business needs.

Magento Community may very well be a good starting point with little or no investment, but for a long-term solution for a larger business with higher online sales, Magento Enterprise offers reliable professional support and is the right way to go.

It is important to keep this factor in mind that Magento is a large eCommerce system that is not well suited for every kind of business. It is best to obtain an expert’s advice on choosing the right system for your business to reap the right results.

So, before you delve into the world of Magento and begin to explore your options, don’t forget to request an unbiased professional opinion on the choice you wish to make.

Is your organisation currently using an eCommerce solution? What were the major limitations that made you consider Magento eCommerce solutions? Let us know in the comments below, and thanks for reading!

The post A Detailed Comparison of Magento Editions – Enterprise vs. Community appeared first on Classic Informatics.

The Internet, by reaching out to each and every computing platform has led to an outburst of information, thereby making big data too big to be handled. A scenario where the data grows beyond the reach of the present management techniques, will lead to total chaos.

Some of the challenges faced with big data are:

• Managing data appropriately is a challenge for any organisation. The optimal use of data in an organised way is a priority task.

• Accessibility and connectivity of huge data are a hurdle. Data points are not integrated and there is no precise platform to manage data between various projects.

• The ever-growing data volume demands a larger technological landscape.
  

• Security of big data is another important aspect that is of concern to companies.

The following chart explains the growth of big data in the recent years:

Fig 1. Graphical Representation of Rise of Big data

Business Intelligence – A Resourceful Solution for big data:

Business Intelligence (BI) provides a solution to big data in the form of data analysis process. BI includes a variety of tools, applications and methodologies that streamline management of huge data.

This system incorporates technologies that provide a correct decision making platform for the organisations.

Some of the important advantages of Business Intelligence solutions are:

1. BI simplifies the process of data management, by collecting data from various sources and organising it, to create reports and for other data analysis requirements.
2. BI accelerates the decision making process, thus enabling us to increase the productivity of internal business processes, enhancing efficiency and directing the flow of revenue.
3. The simplicity of operation allows BI tools to be accessed by anyone from an IT professional to a business executive.
4. BI provides data visualisation in the form of charts and other graphical methods.
5. It simplifies advance data analysis functions like data mining, text mining, statistical analysis and predictive analysis.

Microsoft, the Leader in BI Solutions

A Business Intelligence Solution can be leveraged to its fullest, when it is able to collect data from all possible data points.

To be more specific, the solution should be able to provide all users with the required data, anytime. Microsoft has achieved this apical level by utilising the functionalities of various in-house tools.

Exhibiting exceptional competence, Microsoft has emerged as a leading name in the Business Intelligence Solutions segment.

The various formats of Business Intelligence Solutions from Microsoft are more than capable of meeting the growing expectations of the users.

The aspects that make Microsoft the leader are explained below:

Microsoft BI Development

There are various BI technologies provided by the Microsoft BI Development team. The customer can use them independently or utilise a suite of applications. This completely depends on the customer’s requirement.

A good example is Power BI for Office 365. Microsoft allows customers to build a BI system on applications like SQL Server, Sharepoint and Excel.

The complete assembly is called Power BI for Office 365. The result of grouping powerful tools has brought about a revolutionary change in managing Big data.

The various Microsoft BI technologies are:

• MS SQL Server
• Power BI for office
• MS Power View
• MS SSRS (SQL Server Reporting Services)
• MS SQL Server Analysis Services
• MS Excel and Excel Services
• MS SharePoint
• MS Power BI
• MS Power Query
• MS SQL Server Data Tools
• MS SQL Server Integration Services
• MS SQL Server PowerPivot for Excel
• MS PerformancePoint Services

Microsoft BI Stack

Microsoft BI Development has designed various BI tools and applications which the consumer can select from. The requirements of the customer are matched with a specific software tool.

Based on the requirements, Microsoft Business Intelligence can be classified into three categories vis. personal, team and organisational. All these types are interdependent and any change in one aspect can affect the other two.

As an example, an application like Performance Point server uses MS Excel, Office Sharepoint server and Excel services to complement its BI requirement. Every corporate BI system thus has dependable personal and team BI systems.

Personal BI:

It is basically related to fetching of data for individual use. Personal BI is independent and is not always connected to databases. The most commonly used personal BI is MS Excel.

Team BI:

Team BI is for a group of individuals working as a team. The system focuses on improving coordination and transfer of data amongst the team members. This helps in acceleration of the decision making process. The most well-known Team BI tool is Office SharePoint Server and Excel Services.

Corporate BI:

Corporate BI constitutes the Business Intelligence requirements at the organisational level.

It is a collection of tools to support coordination and promote goal congruence. It provides streamlined synchronisation of data and showcases individual efforts in the form of scorecards and strategy maps. The most commonly used Corporate BI is PerformancePoint Server 2007.

The graphical representation of the various levels of Microsoft BI solutions include:

Fig 2. Graphical Representation of Various BI Frameworks

BI Containers:

The Business Intelligence Solution has two types of containers vis. the On-premises containers and Cloud containers.

On-premises containers are BI solutions that are implemented in a local setup. Examples of On-premises containers include MS office tools, Share point applications and SQL server.

The Cloud containers deal with the Internet and portable applications. Examples of Cloud containers are Excel Service Power BI and Asure IAAS solutions.

The Microsoft BI Ecosystem

The Microsoft BI Ecosystem is the environment created using various BI tools. The ecosystem supports the ever-changing needs of users

The various important aspects of Microsoft BI Ecosystem include:

Self Service:

This the most widely used feature of the Microsoft BI Ecosystem. The strength lies in its ability to reach every user.

A complete self-service BI solution is delivered through Excel and Office 365. This tool facilitates fast data search, analysis and visualisation. It helps the user in getting valuable insights from the data.

The Power BI for Office 365 allows an even more advanced level of data management. It allows easy sharing, access and integration of data using the cloud technology.

Dashboard and Reports:

Reports are one of the most important features of data analysis. The BI tool, SharePoint server provides a convenient platform for report generation and dashboard management.

Filtering of search attributes, interactive analysis and visualisation are the key features of these Microsoft BI solutions.

Analytical Solutions:

Analysis of data from various perspectives is another key feature of any important decision process. The Microsoft BI solution i.e. the SQL Server Analysis Services platform supports multi-dimensional analysis of data.

This feature can be used for visualisation, reporting and data analysis. It supports solution prototyping at the enterprise level.

Predictive Analytics:

Microsoft BI Ecosystem allows gathering of data from various sources including historical data. The data analysis is even more precise when a detailed gathering of data i.e. data mining is done.

This helps in projecting a concept more assertively. Some examples of predictive analysis can be the Data Mining Add-ins in Excel or SQL Server Development tools.

Bigger the Data, Sturdy is the Microsoft Solution

The various challenges that IT organisations faced earlier, while dealing with huge data, has found an optimal solution in form of Microsoft Business Intelligence Solutions.

The vast array of BI tools allow the users to customise the solutions as per their requirements. The previously forecasted scenario of unmanageable data at the local and cloud level can be precisely managed by Microsoft BI solution.

Being the pioneers in providing various IT solutions, Microsoft has also stood strong to lead its way towards Business Intelligence Solutions.

So when do you plan to embrace BI? Do you have any points to share? Please feel free to share your opinions below and thanks for reading!

The post A Brief Guide to Microsoft Business Intelligence Ecosystem appeared first on Classic Informatics.

What is a CMS?

Firstly, we’ll get back to basics and answer a simple question – what exactly is a content management system?

Essentially a content management system (CMS) allows the user to have full control over the addition of content, editing and organisation of their website through a conventional web browser. Without having to delve into code, a CMS can be entirely customisable and adapted to suit an individual or a business’ needs.

Drupal vs. Sharepoint

Before we look too deeply into a comparison between the two management systems, it would be a good idea to revisit exactly what each system offers its customers.

Released in 2001, Drupal is today considered to be one of the leading content management systems for businesses around the world. Released as an open source project, the software is available for free and comes with an unlimited licence for customisation and re-distribution. This is part of Drupal’s appeal – the ‘building blocks’ approach allows users to have flexibility when it comes to their site.

Microsoft Sharepoint comes from a slightly different perspective. Originally produced and developed as a document management system, it has seen numerous development cycles and iterations to make it into the product it is today. There are many different SharePoint products available from Microsoft to enhance the content management of your website – and much of it is based around the cloud and access of a wide range of information from a wide range of devices.

How popular are Drupal and SharePoint as CMS platforms?

The graph below indicates how successful more recent iterations of Drupal have been. Of all sites running Drupal, Version 7 has 69% of the share – with sites such as Twitter and Weather.com being notable examples that highlight the scalability and size of Drupal’s strengths.

The matrix shown underneath from w3techs.com highlights the market position of Drupal and SharePoint as a CMS – showing that both are preferred by many high traffic sites, even though widespread adoption has not yet occurred to the extent seen by Joomla or WordPress.

Benefits of Drupal

As well as the flexibility and ‘building blocks’ approach mentioned earlier, there are many other benefits to using Drupal for your website

• Wide graphic design capability and possibilities – including responsive design
• Unlimited amount of customisation between the front and back end of your site. The administrator portions of the site can be fully altered to suit your needs
• No limits in terms of scalability
• Intuitive content structure, minimizing the learning curve for new administrators

Benefits of SharePoint

SharePoint is an excellent way to store, share and manage a large amount of documents. It is mainly used for Intranet services and eCMS solutions.

• Flexible and customisable document management
• Cloud services
• Top-down collaboration for large amounts of content
• Best used when treated as a database rather than a ‘one size fits all’ CMS solution.

It has been argued by many developers that using Drupal and SharePoint combined will yield the best results from a CMS system – although of course as with any content management system carefully consideration will be needed to ensure you are getting the best from any platform you decide to use.

In many cases should you wish to use SharePoint exclusively as content management system for your website, significant workarounds and add ons will have to be installed. Where is does excel however is in document management and collaboration – you can easily keep track of who is creating and sharing what within your system, and it is therefore highly useful to internal systems, such as the Intranet within organisations, for example.

Summary

Choosing the right CMS can determine to a large extent how you wish to use your site, and how you wish your site to be grown and scaled in the future. Both SharePoint and Drupal have enormous benefits to the users in terms of content management – and Drupal in particular has many customisable options to benefit your site as it grows. If, however, you are looking for a CMS that provides first-class document management, for instance if you are building an Intranet site, then SharePoint is becoming an increasingly obvious choice.

If you need any help choosing your CMS, expert web developers and content management experts can point you in the right direction and in the long run save you time, money and energy migrating. If you make the right decision from stage 1, you are likely to have an excellent and long-term relationship with your CMS.

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Intranet enable the employees get password-based access to a centralised corporate database on the company’s LAN (Local Area Network). These intranet sites have proved themselves useful from the standpoint of easy navigation to the company’s employee contacts list, time tracking applications, company event details, messages from the CEO or from the top management etc.

A major advantage of the company intranet portals has been the use of web-based applications, which have allowed the companies to avoid investing in software licenses for individual employee desktops / laptops.

All employee records are maintained on the intranet for restricted access by the HR team and the employees themselves.

The ticket-based employee service app or portal is one of the common apps in a company’s intranet that enables employees to receive immediate help, with regards to any issues, with their computer hardware, IDcard, project IDgeneration, new software installation, international or domestic travel, etc.

Intranet forums or communities help employees get in touch with each other socially and understand what’s happening across various departments of the organisation.

Having dealt with many innovative intranet product enhancements, it is of paramount importance for us to keep coming up with new ideasto revamp / modernise the existing intranet system in organisations.

Reasons to Revamp Intranet Portals

If you think there is no need of revamping your existing Intranet portals, these reasons will make you think otherwise.

• Although the investment for intranet portals is restricted only to the web server on which it is hosted, it is still possible to reduce costs further and leverage more benefits out of cloud infrastructure services such as Salesforce, Amazon, Azure etc.

• Instead of simple social intranet forums or communities, a comprehensive social networking platform with 24×7 access is required for businesses.
  This is because, apart from helping employees stay in touch and know about various events and happenings quickly across the business line, the social intranet apps can go a long way in assisting the HR or the resource team. It helps find the right internal candidates for various short-term and long-term projects, within a short span of time.

• With the rising trend of mobile websites, it is now imperative for companies to extend mobility to their intranet websites as well.

Tips to Modernise Intranet and Social Apps

Let’s check out some innovative ways to modernise a company’s intranet applications.

Increasing the Social Quotient

Enterprise apps, like Yammer, help employees stay connected and share critical information in various modes across geographical boundaries.

It is necessary to spice up the existing corporate social networking apps as the world thrives on social networking outside the corporate arena.

With this provision available within the organisation, the employees will be motivated more than ever before and this will help improve the overall business productivity.

Improved Mobility

Your company’s intranet might be accessible from mobile devices to the few employees at top-level positions.

But it is necessary to have this intranet mobility for each and every employee in the organisation.

If employees can raise travel requests, fill time cards for weekly effort tracking, book meeting / conference rooms, check the monthly training calendar and send nominations for training programs etc. on the move, it will allow your company to save precious working time.

Online Forms for Better Feedback

One of the major contributions to your company’s improvement and progress often comes from employee feedback. It is necessary to tap useful statistics from employee feedback and opinions, not just annually, but even more frequently.

This can be easily done through feedback or survey forms created using a good e-form builder app for the intranet. You can seek employee opinions for any new business services, new office locations, event ideas, and training programs to name a few.

Conditional Triggers and Intelligent Workflows for Automation

When it comes to managers and the HR department of a company, a major part of working time is spent on approving requests, providing permissions, checking feedback from project teams and more.

When the employees fill any of the online forms, conditional triggers and intelligent workflows for seeking permissions, triggering notifications etc. prove useful.

This helps automate the entire form-filling process for various employee-based activities in an organisation.

Enhancements to Employee Directory

Probably the first thing that comes to your mind when someone asks you to define intranet is access to the employee directory.

Instead of having traditional data such as employee name, address, telephone number, email id, project, and service line mentioned in the directory, you can focus on offering much more through this database.

Some useful tips to enhance the employee directory are listed below:

• By sharing their vehicle numbers along with their starting points, employees can co-ordinate for car pooling and make their daily commute hassle-free.

• Similarly, allowing employees to maintain their social network IDs (for Facebook, Twitter etc.) in the directory will enable them to quickly connect outside the office as well.

• Accommodation information can be maintained for employees willing to share rented flats with their colleagues.

The purpose behind sharing the tips for a modernised intranet is to help realise that, as much as the technologies, products and services offered by a company need to be frequently upgraded, it is imperative to keep upgrading the intranet system as well, to keep up with the needs of the hour.

It is a lifeline for the employees within your organisation and if they are happy, content and connected, your business is bound to grow in your desired direction.

So what do you think about modernising your intranet? Have you planned to do it soon? Please share your comments below. Thanks for reading!

The post Top 3 Reasons Why You Should Invest in Modernising Your Intranet Applications Now appeared first on Classic Informatics.