Demystifying How to Rapidly Build, Integrate, and Deploy “Future of IT” Digital Experiences

The modern information technology industry permeates all major aspects of a nation’s economy. Industries such as banking, media & entertainment, energy, manufacturing, aviation, telecommunications, software development, etc. are almost entirely dependent on the continued efficiency of information technology.

While conventional IT has been largely dependent on data and applications stored and run on-premises, the current decade has seen corporations making rapid migrations to the cloud wherever possible. With modern technology strategies that bridges data, apps, processes, collaborations, and scalable multi-cloud security concerns, while also being flexible to accommodate changing long-term organizational goals.

Enter AppFusions

AppFusions is a company that has been working for years to address complex inter-system IT challenges, with a customer-problem-focused strategy: one which acknowledges that legacy systems and architectures cannot just be ripped out on a whim, but at the same time, newer technologies and models must also be embraced to allow corporate IT departments to move ahead. Common understandings might assume that these objectives are diametrically opposed. AppFusions disagrees.

AppFusions has been steadfast that doing better IT is possible with a holistic IT strategy and plan that leverages modern cross-system building block technologies, patterned, flexible UX design models, tooling, backend architecture, robust directory management and latest security design.

An Evolution

Initially, AppFusions built packaged integration apps: full function end-to-end “apps” between two systems, like Atlassian, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Google, Box, Dropbox, Zendesk or others, while bringing together common workflows, clean UX and secure authentication, easily. The integrations are easy to deploy, trial, and buy – without lengthy, costly, and sometimes painful professional services as well. Nine years later, AppFusions still supports and sustains dozens of ready-to-run integration apps for systems integrating with Atlassian software for dozens of companies that renew yearly. More importantly, the AppFusions’ team learned that the business model of repeatable enterprise integration apps, tuned via customer interactions, worked.

AppSpokes – a Scalable Integration Framework for Web apps

In early 2015, AppFusions took their vision up a level: to build an integrated services framework for cloud web apps. By augmenting their original IP from server-run-Java apps to micro-services apps, AppFusions developed a farm of deep integration app “services” that encompassed the same key tenants: simple, packaged, and “just works”.

Effectively, AppFusions’ original IP was polished and upgraded for cloud Web apps, providing streamlined 24x7 runtime support, continuous integration development and SDK, and optimized performance and scalability. Their integration apps framework for unlimited integration apps is called AppSpokes and is currently running in sites as large as 120K+ end-users.

Enter Mainstream Cloud Services

By mid-2017, AppFusions arrived at new crossroads, given fast-changing market dynamics. The digital revolution is marked by the entry of cloud services. Customers for years may have idly followed the progress of cloud technologies and beyond, but back then and for some years after, it was easy for customers to lay low, with “cloud doesn’t affect us”. This allowed them to keep their tech environments at a status-quo level vs. accepting and taking on the additional expense of change.

At the same time, shadow IT (purpose-built software-as-a-service solutions easily subscribed to by departments and bypassing IT procurement processes) was becoming a force to be reckoned with.

Initially, some CIOs fought back on shadow IT “rogue” app entries into their companies; but as time played out, they wanted integrations between these cloud systems and their legacy systems. At this point, things got tricky: integration posed a new problem where incumbent vendors did not make integration easy. And without integration, internal users were a loud voice of challenge to most any CIO.

Incumbent vendors may have enjoyed this period (say 2009 – 2016ish), as customers would continue to pay their renewal fees regardless, year after year, and the vendors didn’t have to put too much energy or investment into product and feature development. Vendors’ could “milk the fat cow” for a while longer.

But around 2017-2018, customers were finally getting impatient (or disgruntled) with incumbent platform vendors’ lack of product expansion and innovation. Customers began searching for ways to “evolve” from long-time backbone systems that were not extensible or flexible enough to meet their modern needs. Customers, logically, needed modern tools, to work faster, easier, and for better competitive advantage. Meanwhile AppFusions’ AppSpokes had proven to be a secure, scalable, easy-to-deploy and use foundational integration framework.

But, the market beckoned for more.

The incumbent digital experiences and workplaces market in particular was (is) in a state of “being stuck”. The vendors knew they finally had to address the customers’ needs for innovation that had been continually put off. They also knew that modernizing their platforms was not going to be easy.

Incumbent vendors needed to effectively morph their monolithic architectures to a more modern, flexible, extensible platform, like what a multi-tenant microservices architecture provides if done well. They also needed to do this in such a way to still hold onto their existing customer base, and then migrate their customers, somehow. This is hard.

A Solution: AlohaCloud

AppFusions has built AlohaCloud, a fully integrated digital experiences, digital workplaces, and integration framework platform for contemporary organizations that need a lot more than what legacy platforms offer. Among others, it includes customizable and contextually integrated experiences, best-in-class extensibility, intelligence, and security.

AlohaCloud is a “super-app” for digital experiences, workplaces, or “portals” for the modern enterprise. Whether internal (employees) or external (suppliers, partners), or mixed - AlohaCloud handles difficult integrated system group access and authentication challenges, securely. It is a “deploy anywhere” platform for any-cloud. It includes dozens of integrations, an experiences UX builder with embedded building-blocks, real-time data ingestion and business intelligence (BI), engagement metrics, messaging, streams, AI/ machine-learning, fast searchable blockchain encryption and more.

Deploying AlohaCloud effectively leap-frogs an organization’s digital transformation strategy, allowing a CIO or IT organization to be 2+ years down the road on day 1. With proven working technology that ties seamlessly into a customer’s existing stack, it establishes best practices for fast continual development and evolution beyond.

“We are revolutionizing the way IT solves digital transformations and future of work.”