Global hackathon invites developers to build digital solutions designed to support individuals and businesses during coronavirus pandemic
WALNUT CREEK, Calif., April 22, 2020 — Exadel (www.exadel.com), a global provider of digital platform engineering solutions and services, today announced it will be hosting the “Appery.io COVID-19 Virtual Hackathon” that invites developers from all over the world to build digital solutions that solve challenges posed by the Coronavirus. The Appery.io COVID-19 Virtual Hackathon begins April 22, 2020 at 9 a.m. PDT with final submissions due May 6, 2020 by 11:59 p.m. PDT. Applications will be judged by a panel of experts with up to $1,000 in cash prizes awarded.
Sign-up for the Appery.io COVID-19 Virtual Hackathon today: (https://covid.appery.io/)
Using Appery.io, a low-code application development platform created by Exadel and used by nearly 500,000 developers worldwide, participants are encouraged to build applications that help groups and businesses most impacted by COVID-19. Projects should focus on areas like healthcare, mental health, assistance for the elderly or vulnerable, improving remote work, financial stability or maintaining a sense of community. Developers are free to be as innovative and unique as possible with minimal restrictions on application type or theme.
Participants are welcome to register and submit their applications starting April 22, 2020. Submissions close May 6, 2020 and will be judged by a panel of experts according to a range of relevant criteria. A virtual, live ceremony will take place on May 10, 2020 where finalists will be recognized. Prizes will be awarded as follows:
- First-Place – $1,000 and an Appery.io Annual Pro Subscription
- Second-Place – $500 and an Appery.io Annual Pro Subscription
- Third-Place – $250 and an Appery.io Annual Pro Subscription
For more information on how to get started, FAQ’s and guidelines please visit: (https://covid.appery.io/)
“While physical interaction is being limited in many global communities, it’s important to find ways to connect and support one another in alternative settings,” said Fima Katz, CEO and President of Exadel. “By hosting this hackathon, we hope to bring together the developer community in a meaningful way where they can innovate and experiment with projects aimed at helping those who need it most. We look forward to reviewing and gaining inspiration from the submissions.”
Tweet this: .@exadel announces @apperyio COVID-19 Virtual Hackathon to bring together #developer community to build projects aimed at solving common challenges faced today #ApperyHackathon
About Exadel
Exadel is a leading digital platform engineering services provider. Through technical software development, Exadel helps Fortune 500 clients accelerate their digital transformations by providing innovative solutions, services and engineering expertise. Exadel enables clients to engage competitively with their customers by delivering products and platforms at optimal efficiency. With 20+ locations and delivery centers across the US and Europe, Exadel solves the most complex engineering problems using recognized agile practices, offering a high-quality and skilled mix of multi-shore resources with deep knowledge of advanced technologies.
About Appery.io
Appery.io is a low-code, rapid development, integration and deployment platform created by Exadel for delivering cross-device apps in the enterprise. It combines enterprise-grade integration middleware with a browser-based rapid development environment and mobile backend services to accelerate enterprise mobilization. Appery.io enables developers and business analysts to rapidly create and run apps that help businesses of all sizes increase revenues and improve productivity.
Tag: Exadel
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Exadel Announces Appery.io COVID-19 Virtual Hackathon to Engage Global Developer Community
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Exadel Announces New Leadership to Support Growing Digital Transformation Solutions and Services
WALNUT CREEK, Calif., February 25, 2020 — Exadel (www.exadel.com), a global leader in digital transformation solutions and Agile services, announced today that Ilya Cantor, Exadel Board Member and Strategic Advisor, is assuming the role of CEO with continuing leadership from Fima Katz as President. The new management changes reflect the increasing business momentum and continued growth Exadel is seeing across every segment of the business.
Cantor, who has served as an Exadel Board Member and Strategic Advisor since 2017, has nearly 30 years of experience as an operational executive. He has a proven track record of driving transformation and change through focused execution, often in complex and dynamic market environments. Ilya has extensive hands-on experience in helping companies scale, in launching initial public offerings as well as extensive merger and acquisition experience in leading numerous acquisitions, executing integrations, and driving complex organizational redesign.
During his time as an Exadel Board Member and Strategic Advisor, Cantor helped drive growth and generate measurable results by guiding Exadel’s strategic direction and market positioning, improving governance and operational discipline, and increasing shareholder value.
Prior to taking on the CEO role at Exadel, Cantor held executive positions at EPAM Systems, which he helped take public onto the NYSE in 2012; served as CFO and Executive Director of Operations at The Wall Street Journal; and, also led Talent Acquisition, Business and Financial Operations, IT and Corporate Development at Aricent (now Capgemini). Ilya has a deep understanding of the IT services industry and more specifically, the digital transformation market in which Exadel holds a leadership position.
Katz founded Exadel in 1998 and has served as CEO since the company’s inception. In his new role as President, Katz will lead the client-facing aspects of the organization as well as technology and innovation, which continue to drive the momentum and growth of Exadel and it’s solutions and offerings.
“It is a great opportunity to be named CEO of Exadel and to build upon the great leadership and accomplishments of Fima,” said Cantor. “This is a pivotal time for the company and I look forward to continuing to drive market share gains in a huge market that is growing rapidly — as virtually every company in the world has to invest in business transformation and technology in order to remain competitive and win. Exadel’s core assets are our people and the technical expertise in product engineering which comprises over 90% of our business today. I am excited to continue expanding Exadel’s pedigree of leading technology solutions and services while protecting and building upon the ‘people-first’ culture that is at the core of Exadel’s success.”
“We are very excited to have Ilya join Exadel as our new CEO. His history and experience will drive our future growth and take us to the next level,” said Katz. “Ilya’s unique talents already have influenced new directions for the company and created opportunities that will quickly become game-changers in the market.”
Tweet this:.@exadel announces new leadership and organizational changes to fuel growth of #digitaltransformation solutions and services
About Exadel
For more than 20 years, Exadel has been delivering Digital Transformation services, enterprise and custom software solutions for Fortune 500 clients, including HPE, Deloitte, Home Depot and McKesson. With 20+ locations and delivery centers across the US and Europe, Exadel solves the most complex engineering problems using Agile methodologies, offering a scalable and skilled mix of multi-shore resources at the industry’s most competitive price. Exadel’s digital transformation solutions and services help chart new strategies that are built upon creative thinking, cutting-edge design, and technical innovation, designed for the growing digital landscape of business. -
Exadel Announces New Office in Germany to Support Growing Local Tech Economy
Exadel to provide increased digital transformation support and services for local customers
WALNUT CREEK, Calif., November 13, 2019 — Exadel (www.exadel.com), a global leader in digital software engineering solutions, today announced it has opened a new office in Germany. The expansion is in response to the increased demand for digital software engineering services in the region and will provide local customers with digital transformation solutions in various modern IT technologies, including blockchain, AI/ML, Big Data and more. Exadel now boasts 20 locations around the globe with 18 in Europe.
With this additional location, Exadel looks to improve service quality for current customers and offers its breadth of services to new customers in Germany. Exadel already has a stronghold in the region, with a leading German financial institution and top automakers having trusted Exadel’s digital software engineering services. While current and future local customers can take advantage of all of Exadel’s solution offerings, they will be focusing on providing qualified support in digital transformation. Exadel also recently introduced the Innovation Lab by Exadel, designed to help enterprises test emerging technologies like blockchain, AI, mobile, chatbot and machine learning models to determine strategic fit.
Learn more about the Innovation Lab by Exadel: https://exadel.com/innovation-lab/
“We are excited to announce this new location in Germany,” said Fima Katz, CEO of Exadel. “It marks a strong year of growth for Exadel and we are looking forward to being at the heart of rapid technological growth in the area. While we have served many German-based clients in our tenure, we realize the importance of developing and maintaining personal connections with customers and will be able to better nurture these relationships through this expansion.”
Tweet this: .@exadel announces a new office in Germany to support the needs of local technology companies that are innovating rapidly
About Exadel
For more than 20 years, Exadel has been developing enterprise and custom software solutions for Fortune 500 clients, including AT&T, Samsung, Bank of America, eBay, and GE. With 20 locations and delivery centers across the US and Europe, Exadel solves the most complex software engineering problems, offering a scalable and skilled mix of onshore and offshore resources at the industry’s most competitive price. Our Digital Software Engineering Solutions (DSES) help chart new digital strategies that are built upon creative thinking, cutting-edge design, and technical innovation. DSES embraces the strengths of diverse global software engineering talent to create and implement strategic, cost-effective services for the new epoch of connected technology.
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Exadel Launches Adobe Experience Manager Authoring Toolkit as Open Source Tool for Digital Marketing Community
AEM Authoring Toolkit lets anyone take advantage of new Adobe authoring capabilities
WALNUT CREEK, Calif., September 10, 2019 — Exadel (www.exadel.com), a global leader in digital software engineering solutions, today announced the availability of its Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Authoring Toolkit. An open source project developed and maintained by the Exadel Digital Marketing Technology team, the Toolkit is available as a packaged, fully supported solution to Exadel’s enterprise clients and as an open source tool for the community. The Toolkit supports an automatic yet versatile and extendable generation of UI elements for AEM authors and provides a next-gen authoring experience in Adobe’s Coral UI-powered environment.
Try the open source version of AEM Authoring Toolkit here: https://github.com/exadel-inc/aem-authoring-toolkit
“Open source-based product development has been at the heart of what Exadel does from day one, and we are excited to extend this dedication to our AEM Authoring Toolkit,” said Lev Shur, President of Exadel Solutions. “Adobe is a clear leader in digital marketing solutions, but keeping up with the AEM ecosystem can be challenging. This Toolkit brings speed, reliability and automation to the AEM authoring experience, helping clients and users ultimately create more powerful, robust and beautiful sites.”
The AEM Authoring Toolkit:
- Generates rich and versatile AEM components dialogs and in-place editing facilities based on annotations added to backend Java classes and/or their fields.
- Relieves AEM developers from writing down the complex XML markup for the authoring interface, preventing difficult-to-trace errors.
- Allows “inheriting” certain features and markup specificity across components, reducing the amount of Java code to store and maintain.
- Supports reusing and fine-tuning available authoring widgets and redefining their attributes.
- Little to no Java code refactoring is needed. It also decreases UI team effort for developing the “authoring” side of AEM installation.
- Highly configurable via both annotation values and Maven configuration.
- Works with AEM 6.4 and newer on JDK 1.8+ in any operating system.
For a full list of AEM Authoring Toolkit features and functions visit here: https://github.com/exadel-inc/aem-authoring-toolkit
Additional open source projects Exadel has developed include Exadel Developer Studio, which became the foundation of the Red Hat CodeReady Studio and Exadel RichFaces, which then became JBoss RichFaces. Exadel has contributed to dozens of other open source projects as well.
Tweet this: .@exadel brings AEM Authoring Toolkit as a solution to enterprise digital marketing technology initiatives and as an #opensource solution
About Exadel
For more than 20 years, Exadel has been developing enterprise and custom software solutions for Fortune 500 clients, including AT&T, Samsung, Bank of America, eBay, and GE. With 20 locations and delivery centers across the US and Eastern Europe, Exadel solves the most complex software engineering problems, offering a scalable and skilled mix of onshore and offshore resources at the industry’s most competitive price. Our Digital Software Engineering Solutions (DSES) help chart new digital strategies that are built upon creative thinking, cutting-edge design, and technical innovation. DSES embraces the strengths of diverse global software engineering talent to create and implement strategic, cost-effective services for the new epoch of connected technology.
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Exadel Announces New Chief Technical Officer and Vice President of Delivery to Support Growing Practices and Solutions Portfolio
Igor Landes and Mikhail Andrushkevich bring decades of industry experience to Exadel
WALNUT CREEK, Calif., Aug. 8, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — Exadel (www.exadel.com), a global leader in digital software engineering solutions, today announced Igor Landes as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and Mikhail Andrushkevich as Vice President of Delivery. Both Landes and Andrushkevich bring deep experience and expertise to their respective new positions that will strengthen Exadel’s software delivery excellence for a growing roster of global customers.
Prior to his current position, Landes served as Chief Delivery Officer and Vice President of Engineering at Exadel. As CTO, Landes’ primary focus will be to provide support to the sales team, along with promoting technical excellence across all parts of the organization. In addition, he will be responsible for:
- Identifying technology trends and aligning applications with Exadel Business objectives
- Defining and implementing the technology innovation strategy, including support for the Innovation Lab
- Supporting solutions marketing and verticalization
With more than 25 years of extensive experience in the software industry, Landes has the expertise to fulfill the role of CTO.
“I am excited to get started in my new role as CTO,” said Landes. “Combining my background in leading globally distributed software development projects along with this increased responsibility gives me the opportunity to pursue my passion for providing software solutions to our customers.”
“We are very excited to have Igor in the CTO office at Exadel,” said Fima Katz, founder and CEO at Exadel. “He has a proven track record of delivering complex projects in a high-pressure environment and an extensive background in leading globally distributed software development projects.”
Andrushkevich has been at Exadel for more than 13 years and has held positions such as Program Manager, Senior Delivery Manager, Department Manager, Scrum Master and Project Manager before his appointment to Vice President of Delivery. In this new role, Andrushkevich is responsible for the delivery of Exadel solutions for clients, improving the quality of these solutions, enhancing the software development processes, and developing new leaders within Exadel. He also provides senior leadership and supervision for all delivery management staff at Exadel. Andrushkevich has more than 18 years of professional experience working on large products as well as in services.
“Software delivery is at the core of what Exadel provides,” said Andrushkevich. “As VP of Delivery, I am eager to help ensure all products and projects delivered to customers are of the highest quality. We strive for excellence in all we do at Exadel and I look forward to being a steward of this promise.”
“Mikhail has proved himself as a successful leader of multiple international teams,” said Katz. “The company has established itself as a leader in agile software delivery, but the expertise he brings in project and product management, using Agile approaches, and creating successful teams, was the missing link we needed to connect our customers and our solutions effectively.”
With the promotion of these two individuals, Exadel is looking forward to helping enterprises build complex software products and projects, stay ahead of the innovation curve and ensure that digital transformations are successful and agile.
Tweet this: .@exadel announces new #CTO, Igor Landes and new VP of Delivery, Mikhail Andrushkevich to drive software development solutions that solve complex business challenges
About Exadel
For more than 20 years, Exadel has been developing enterprise and custom software solutions for Fortune 500 clients, including AT&T, Samsung, Bank of America, eBay, and GE. With 20 locations and delivery centers across the US and Eastern Europe, Exadel solves the most complex software engineering problems, offering a scalable and skilled mix of onshore and offshore resources at the industry’s most competitive price. Our Digital Software Engineering Services (DSES) help chart new digital strategies that are built upon creative thinking, cutting-edge design, and technical innovation. DSES embraces the strengths of diverse global software engineering talent to create and implement strategic, cost-effective services for the new epoch of connected technology.
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Appery.io Adds Ionic 4 Integration to Help Developers Build High-Performing Hybrid and Mobile Web Apps
Exadel’s low code application development platform, Appery.io, now integrates with popular Ionic 4 framework
WALNUT CREEK, Calif., June 18, 2019 — Exadel (www.exadel.com), a global leader in digital software engineering solutions, today announced its leading low-code application development platform, Appery.io, now integrates with Ionic 4. A powerful UI design system and app framework, Ionic 4 is used by web developers to create modern, high performing web and mobile applications.
Appery.io is used by more than 500,000 developers globally and makes creating hybrid mobile apps, web apps and Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) simple in a low-code environment. The latest version, Ionic 4, gives developers flexibility in the tools and other frameworks they choose to use on top, making it easier to manage. Additionally, Appery.io Ionic 4 framework supports the latest Angular version 7 and Cordova 8 and includes overall performance improvements, modern web platform features, CSS variables, and more. Appery.io users can take advantage of these benefits along with the full MBaaS offered by the platform and build an Ionic app in Appery.io.
Try Appery.io for free: https://appery.io/
“Ionic 4 has been well received by the web developer community,” said Dmitry Binunsky, VP Products and Platforms Practice at Exadel. “Now Appery.io users can seamlessly build an Ionic 4 app directly in the platform. Appery.io is dedicated to helping developers effortlessly build quality, high-performing applications and the Ionic 4 integration is our continuation of this commitment.”
Earlier this year, Appery.io also announced support for Progressive Web Apps. New and existing users are able to turn apps into PWAs seamlessly with a few clicks, and without having to change any code.
Tweet this: .@apperyio now integrates with Ionic 4 framework, making it easier than ever for developers to build modern mobile and web applications
About Exadel
For more than 20 years, Exadel has been developing enterprise and custom software solutions for Fortune 500 clients, including AT&T, Samsung, Bank of America, eBay, and GE. With 18 locations and delivery centers across the US and Eastern Europe, Exadel solves the most complex software engineering problems, offering a scalable and skilled mix of onshore and offshore resources at the industry’s most competitive price. Our Digital Software Engineering Solutions (DSES) help chart new digital strategies that are built upon creative thinking, cutting-edge design, and technical innovation. DSES embraces the strengths of diverse global software engineering talent to create and implement strategic, cost-effective services for the new epoch of connected technology.
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Exadel Named a Leader in Midsize Agile Software Development Service Providers Report by an Independent Research Firm
Company achieves the highest score in ‘Current Offering’ category and customers praised Exadel’s consistently high quality and productivity
WALNUT CREEK, CA – June 3, 2019 – Exadel (www.exadel.com), a global leader in digital software engineering solutions, today announced it was named a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Midsize Agile Software Development Service Providers, Q2 2019, by Forrester Research Inc. In the Midsize Agile Software Development Service Providers Wave, Forrester evaluated companies based on “Current Offering,” “Strategy” and “Market Presence,” with Exadel achieving the highest score in the Current Offering category.
Download the full report here: (https://exadel.com/agile-wave/)
The report is designed to help application development and delivery (AD&D) professionals select the right Agile service provider for their needs. In the report, author Duncan Jones (Vice President, Principal Analyst Serving Sourcing and Vendor Management Professionals) led an evaluation of 13 providers and researched, analyzed, and scored them.
“Customer references praised Exadel’s people, not only for their consistently high quality and productivity but also for their willingness to proactively contribute to co-innovation,” the report states. “One reference told us ‘their software performs better and is easier to manage’ Exadel is a strong choice for AD&D leaders who need to accelerate their firm’s product development and want a partner at the lower end of the midsize range.”
“We believe being named a Leader in Forrester’s report and achieving the highest score in the ‘Current Offering’ category supports Exadel’s strong commitment to Agile innovation,” said Fima Katz, CEO of Exadel. “To remain competitive in today’s market, digital organizations must move quickly, but cannot sacrifice quality in the process, and Agile is a proven way to blend the two. Exadel is rooted in Agile application development and delivery, and our developers continue to take tremendous pride in the work they produce with clients.”
As noted in the report, Exadel has differentiated, proprietary solutions like low-code development platform Appery.io and the Innovation Lab. Per Katz, “With the Innovation Lab, we are combining our Agile expertise with a virtual experience where IT leaders can move from vision to decision with emerging technologies – building and testing proof of concepts in an Agile environment in days.”
Get started with the Innovation Lab here: (https://exadel.com/innovation-lab/)
Exadel’s focus on attracting and retaining high-quality developers, collaborating and co-innovating with clients, and providing differentiated proprietary solutions makes the company a trusted choice for Agile AD&D. Market leaders including UBS, GHX and Deloitte have chosen to partner with Exadel on some of their toughest digital software engineering projects, requiring top tier Agile services.
For more information on Exadel’s full services and capabilities please visit: (https://exadel.com/services/)
Tweet this: .@exadel named a ‘Leader’ in @forrester’s 2019 Midsize #Agile Software Development Service Providers Wave https://exadel.com/agile-wave/
About Exadel
For more than 20 years, Exadel has been developing enterprise and custom software solutions for Fortune 500 clients, including AT&T, Samsung, Bank of America, eBay, and GE. With 18 locations and delivery centers across the US and Eastern Europe, Exadel solves the most complex software engineering problems, offering a scalable and skilled mix of onshore and offshore resources at the industry’s most competitive price. Our Digital Software Engineering Solutions (DSES) help chart new digital strategies that are built upon creative thinking, cutting-edge design, and technical innovation. DSES embraces the strengths of diverse global software engineering talent to create and implement strategic, cost-effective services for the new epoch of connected technology.
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DevOps Chat: Digital Transformation with Exadel’s Jonathan Fries
In this DevOps Chat, Jonathan Fries, VP of Engineering and Digital Transformation at Exadel, tells us about the new Innovation Lab by Exadel—a place for organizations to accelerate their transformation. We also talk about the state of IT in general from his perch at Exadel, a company with 20 years of empowering IT.
You can find out more about the Innovation Lab at exadel.com/innovation-lab/.
As usual, the streaming audio is immediately below, followed by the transcript of our conversation.
Transcript
Alan Shimel: Hello, everyone, it’s Alan Shimel, devopsy.kinsta.cloud, and you’re listening to another DevOps Chat. This episode of DevOps Chat features Jonathan Fries of Exadel. Jonathan, welcome!
Jonathan Fries: Hi, Alan. It’s great to be here.
Shimel: Hey, it’s great to have you here, Jonathan, and I wanna thank you. It’s always nice to have a new company coming up on our chats here, so it’s—you know, some fresh blood for the audience. I assume most of our audience is not familiar with Exadel, so why don’t we start with that, Jonathan? Tell us a little bit about Exadel.
Fries: Sure. So, Exadel is a global software engineering services firm. So, we help our clients write software. We have—we’re a global company, so we have offices in Eastern Europe, Belarus, Lithuania, Poland being kinda the big ones where we have our offices in Europe. And, you know, we help clients in a variety of areas. Probably our big verticals are health care, finance, transportation, media and entertainment, and high tech. And, you know, we have some really good clients in those areas. Health care, McKesson is one that people have heard of. Finance, we work with Deloitte. In the high tech world, we have HP and Google as our clients.
So, we’re doing offshore development for a lot of it. We have teams that are either all in Europe or usually a hybrid of some people here in the U.S. and some people in Europe. We’ve got about a thousand developers in Europe, so that’s where a lot of our work gets done. We’ve been around for 20 years, and so yeah, that’s a bit about Exadel.
Shimel: Another overnight sensation, huh?
Fries: Pardon?
Shimel: I said another overnight sensation.
Fries: [Laughter] Yeah, it’s been a gradual sort of buildup of working with clients and, you know, getting to work with a lot of interesting companies and them recommending us to others.
The name of the company actually comes from a combination of excellent and delivery. I always think that that’s an interesting fact to bring up, and I think it’s an important part about kind of who we are and where we come from and how we got that list of clients. You know, we’re all about building really great products, software products for our customers, and that’s how we’ve grown the business.
Shimel: Sure. So, and Jonathan, you know, kidding aside about overnight sensation, that’s the right way to build the business, right? You don’t just—I mean, yeah, everybody wants to be a unicorn, but unicorns are mythical, right? [Laughter]
Fries: [Laughter]
Shimel: [Cross talk] the world and all of that, so good for you guys. But you know what I didn’t mention is, what exactly—and just sharing with the audience, what’s your position with Exadel?
Fries: My title is Vice President of Engineering and Digital Transformation. So, my background is in the software development world doing software development, leading teams, eventually sort of managing engagements and things like that, and also today heading up the digital transformation practice inside of Exadel.
So, my background comes from the technology world and software development, and that’s why I’m proud of—I’m proud of our engineering capabilities and what we’re able to do for customers.
Shimel: Good for you, good for you. So, Jonathan, you know, digital transformation is such a buzzword today, right?
Fries: Yep.
Shimel: We’ve all heard it, you know, and the one thing I’ve learned is that, for many organizations, you know, digital transformation is hard, right? I’ve heard so many people say, “Well, this wasn’t as easy as it was made out to be.” And I think one of the issues is, is that, if you can’t define something, how can you achieve something? Right?
Fries: Yeah.
Shimel: And so, it starts with, “Well, what exactly does digital transformation mean?” And so, I’ll throw it back at you—what does digital transformation mean to you?
Fries: So, digital transformation for us is about helping our clients with the—you know, the doing and the engineering work of doing digital transformation. So, it’s about software development—you know, in particular it’s cloud development today—QA automation, and DevOps. I mean, those are really the big three areas of expertise within the company that we’ve really brought together under the digital transformation sort of heading as well as our agile methodology expertise, and so, bringing kind of those four things together. And they completely make sense together, because, you know, DevOps is really kind of the technology reflection of agile methodology and agile methodology is kind of the methodology reflection of the DevOps technology mindset. And QA automation is so tightly wound into DevOps and really the way that we’re delivering software and the way that our DevOps solutions work are very much married a lot today to cloud development.
And so, we’re bringing all of those things together, which are all things that Exadel had lots of expertise in, but figuring out how to make sure that we were weaving those strands together, if you will, in a really sort of explicit way and building up some solutions for clients. Not just, “Hey, we’re really good at those things, and we have people who can be really good at those things for you,” but we can bring all of our best practices together and some technology solutions together.
So, that’s what it is for us. It’s very much, you know, we’re a software development, software engineering firm, so we really—you know, we’re not sort of going after the cultural transformation part of that, or the, you know, the change management. I mean, we certainly have experience with those things, but for us, it’s really about the development side of it and our expertise in helping clients take on hard projects and succeed.
Shimel: Absolutely, absolutely. Let’s talk a little bit about something new that Exadel recently delivered, and that’s the Innovation Lab. Talk to us—what exactly is the Innovation Lab?
Fries: Yeah, the Innovation Lab is, it’s a new offering that we’re bringing to the market that combines some things that we already have into one thing. So, you know, we’ve all heard about the importance of innovation and even innovation labs. You know, some companies have them or are creating them. Exadel’s Innovation Lab is sort of more of a virtual innovation lab as opposed to, say, a physical place that we help someone create.
So, we already have something called Appery, which is a cross-platform, low code development environment for creating cross-platform mobile apps as well as, like, a low code backend that runs behind that. So, that’s a way to build software very quickly to create real, working software.
We already have a lot of expertise in agile development, as I mentioned before. And so, that’s also part of what we do. We have really great resources, all of those developers that we have, you know, in Europe and some here. And we have some packaged solutions that are a part of those practices.
So, we’re bringing those all together to help our clients innovate. So, you know, what we wanna do is help our clients who are looking for a way to move faster, experiment, try something, get some features in front of customers or business stakeholders more quickly, and the Innovation Lab is our sort of packaged solution for doing that.
So we can, we bring all of those things together—low code development, agile, on-demand resources when there might be something. Since a lot of what people what to experiment today are things like artificial intelligence and blockchain and how can we make those things work for us, so that’s—you know, often, we might have to bring in, you know, we might have to bring in an expert to help out with that as well.
So, it’s really, it’s all of those things to help our customers and new customers innovate more quickly.
Shimel: Got it. So, you know, and to me, when I look at it, Jonathan, you know, we talk about digital transformation, and what I said before about how, if you can’t define it, how can you be successful, and even once you define it, it’s an experiment in a lot of ways, right? It’s kinda that classic DevOps where you deliver, you learn, you get feedback loops, you iterate, you reiterate, and you keep reiterating.
And an innovation lab is kinda the perfect place to kinda have that sort of learning that propels, that helps you define and then succeed in your digital transformation, right?
Fries: Yep.
Shimel: You know, you don’t wanna practice, I guess, on live TV or stuff like that. But you need—you need these labs to push the envelope and find out what works for you and what doesn’t work for you.
Fries: Yeah. I very much view it, you know, as an extension of the product owner, you know, life cycle from scrum. You know, there’s the regular sort of software development life cycle within scrum where you’re doing your sprints and you’re delivering software.
Shimel: Mm-hmm.
Fries: But a big part of what the product owner should be doing is developing the product backlog which includes, you know, testable hypotheses. That’s kinda the way that the scrum community talks about it.
And so, the Innovation Lab is a way for product owners to test some hypotheses that they might not be able to test, you know, if they already have a product. Like, you may not wanna do all the work to develop it and test the hypotheses over here, or that hypothesis over here. You may wanna use something like the Innovation Lab where we can use some of the tools at our disposal to create something that you can deliver and test out one of those—you know, test a hypothesis kind of on its own, if you will—but with working software. Which, you know, as we know is also a big part of agile and DevOps. You know, wireframes and requirements are great and they have a place, but they’re not the best way to show people what you’re doing or get feedback, and this really allows us to help clients do that and do it more quickly.
Shimel: Got it. I agree 100 percent. Interesting—great idea. Moving off Innovation Lab, there’s other stuff going on at Exadel. You wanna share with our audience a little bit?
Fries: Sure, yeah. We just launched the practice areas. As I mentioned, I’m the head of the Digital Transformation practice, and we also have a Digital Marketing Technology practice and a Products and Platforms practice that, much like digital transformation, the other two are also things that, you know, in places where we already have a fair amount of expertise and were kind of collecting all of that together in one place.
So, for Digital Marketing Technology, we have some pretty significant clients for whom we’ve done work with Adobe Experience Manager to build global, localized, large scale websites. And since we had really done that several times, the Digital Marketing Technology practice is all about packaging that solution and delivering that to other clients for kind of building those large scale worldwide type of websites with Adobe.
Products and Platforms is—you know, given that we’ve developed Appery, which really is, you know, it’s not just an application, it’s a whole platform for building other applications, and we’ve done that both for ourselves with Appery as well with several of our other clients like GHX where we’re creating a lot more than just an application, it’s this whole ecosystem. And so, that Products and Platforms practice sort of brings together the best of our knowledge base about developing those really sophisticated, large scale platforms.
And Digital Transformation, of course, which is mine, is all about DevOps, cloud tech, QA automation, and agile. We have a solution that we’re putting together within the Digital Transformation practice that is a cross-cloud Kubernetes implementation that’s all done with Terraform and we’re actually getting ready to use that with the first customer now. We’ve kinda been just doing our internal dev on it, but we’ve shown it to some people and they’re pretty interested in that. The first customer will probably just use it on Azure, but it’s got some really sophisticated—you know, deploying Kubernetes with Terraform, autoscaling, a lot of really cool tech for containerized application development. So, I’m pretty excited about that.
Shimel: So am I. I mean, it’s an exciting time to be alive in IT. I mean, from a developer point of view, from an ops point of view, there are so many options and so—you know, such power at your fingertips.
Fries: Yeah.
Shimel: It really is, you know, it’s a golden age to be into this kinda stuff.
Fries: Yeah, I agree. I mean, I just—I think it’s an amazing time and, you know, I think there’s so much opportunity. There’s so much opportunity out there in what you can do and so forth and then how easy it is now to, you know, to bring computing solutions online for stuff, you know, and it’s what can be done.
It’s awesome, and I know that, you know, it’s a lot of change and it can be hard on people sometimes, but I’m definitely an optimist and an “all ships will rise” type of guy, so, you know, I see all those opportunities out there and it’s like—you know, yeah, there’s an awful lot exciting going on.
Shimel: Well, you know, Jonathan, I think in our business, either we can be optimists, or we can be cynics.
Fries: Yeah.
Shimel: I got into it yesterday, some guy, I don’t even remember his name, but he tweeted, “Oh, those DevOps people selling snake oil! There’s no such thing!” I think they reach a certain age where they just feel like there’s nothing new under the sun, and therefore, they’re just gonna bad mouth, right, whatever new comes along, and—hey man, you know, there’s a place for them on Earth, too, I guess.
Fries: Yeah, and I mean, I think there’s always, I think, a real reason to be concerned about automation and the changes that that brings to not just our industry, but all of society. I mean, you can look around and see how much automation is impacting everything and, you know, as somebody with—you know, I have kids who are grade school aged kids, and it’s like, the world’s gonna look a lot different 20 years from now, so here’s what you need to spend your time thinking about and learning. Because, you know, if you really wanna do this kinda job, it’s not gonna be there 20 years from now.
Shimel: And I have kids in high school and college and I’m telling them the same thing, man. It’s a crazy world. But you know something? To me, you know, we talk about being optimist, pessimist—Jonathan, the flip side of digital transformation is disruption.
Fries: Yeah.
Shimel: Right? And so, you get to the haves and the have nots. You have the empowered people who embrace transformation and are accelerating their business, and you have the laggards who don’t, and they may very well have to die off, right?
Fries: Yeah.
Shimel: I think that’s the choice that we—you know, that it’s nice to talk about this golden age, but that’s also the choice out there is, you can get with it or fall by the wayside. It’s compete or die. And, you know, that may be harsh to some, but that, I think, is the way it is.
Fries: Yeah. It’s kind of been true for, you know, for a while, honestly. Industrialization automated some things, and like I said, I think, at the end of the day, the new businesses that will be created by digital transformation, the businesses that will be completely transformed by digital transformation will create, you know, even more opportunity, and as long as you are looking at it through the lens of those things, even though automation can be—you know, it can be scary.
I mean, like I said, I came from—I was a developer and worked in IT and things like that, and you know, there was lots of things even 20 years ago, where it’s like, “Oh, these things are gonna change everything and jobs will go away” and it’s like—you know, that’s—
Shimel: [Cross talk] Doesn’t happen, doesn’t happen. Anyway, Jonathan—
Fries: No, it happens.
Shimel: – when we started, I told you, the 15 minutes goes really quick, man. [Laughter]
Fries: Yeah.
Shimel: And we’re way over already. I apologize, but I didn’t wanna stop you, you were on a roll, and I thought it was a good conversation. So, but we’re gonna need to pull the plug on this episode of DevOps Chat. Jonathan Fries from Exadel, thanks for being our guest today.
Fries: Absolutely, Alan. It was great. Thanks for having me.
Shimel: Alright! This is Alan Shimel, devopsy.kinsta.cloud, and you just listened to another DevOps Chat.
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Exadel Provides Cloud, DevOps and QA Automation Capabilities to Accelerate Digital Transformation in the Enterprise
Cloud, DevOps and QA Automation services allow enterprise clients to stay ahead of increasing demands from customers and the business
WALNUT CREEK, Calif., April 16, 2019 — Exadel (www.exadel.com), a global leader in digital software engineering solutions, today announced new updates to its Digital Transformation Practice (DTP). The Exadel Digital Transformation Practice brings together expertise in modern application design and development (ADD) and now includes cloud-first and cloud-hybrid design, microservices architecture support, and DevOps and QA Automation services.
From decades of experience working with clients on software development projects, Exadel has developed a packaged solution focused on addressing modern technologies associated with successful digital transformation initiatives. This solution includes best practices around building a Kubernetes-based model for application development complete with automated deployments using the popular open source infrastructure-as-code software tool, Terraform, and baked-in best practices for QA automation and microservices development. Because it uses Terraform, the solution can be deployed to multiple cloud providers – it currently supports AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.
It is available as a one-size-fits-all solution including:
- Firewall – using Bastion as a secure layer between the public internet and Demilitarized Zone (DMZ)
- DMZ – public subnet protecting internal resources
- Kubernetes-based App Infrastructure – deploy Kubernetes and container infrastructure including auto-scaling
- QA Automation Templates – containers hosting Selenium and QA automation technology
- Microservice Development Template – templates for global application service and local application service discovery
- Data Service Connectors – separate subnet for hosting data services for specific cloud providers
Each of these components can also be separated out and deployed independently to accelerate a more traditional DevOps engagement.
“We are excited to expand our Digital Transformation capabilities to better support our enterprise clients and their digital transformation journeys,” said Jonathan Fries, VP Engineering and Digital Transformation at Exadel. “Software engineering trends like cloud migration, decoupling legacy architecture, DevOps tools and practices, and QA Automation must be considered for any organization undergoing a digital transformation. Through more than 20 years of experience, Exadel is able to provide clients a packaged solution aimed at solving their toughest software engineering challenges. We understand that every organization is unique and can custom-fit our services to align with each client’s goals and needs.”
Learn more about Exadel’s DTP capabilities and clients: https://exadel.com/services/digital-transformation/
Tweet this: .@exadel announces #DevOps, #Cloud, #Microservices and #QA capabilities to accelerate digital transformation in the enterprise
About Exadel
For more than 20 years, Exadel has been developing enterprise and custom software solutions for Fortune 500 clients, including AT&T, Samsung, Bank of America, eBay, and GE. With 18 locations and delivery centers across the US and Eastern Europe, Exadel solves the most complex software engineering problems, offering a scalable and skilled mix of onshore and offshore resources at the industry’s most competitive price. Our Digital Software Engineering Solutions (DSES) help chart new digital strategies that are built upon creative thinking, cutting-edge design, and technical innovation. DSES embraces the strengths of diverse global software engineering talent to create and implement strategic, cost-effective services for the new epoch of connected technology.
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Exadel Announces Products and Platforms Practice to Help Enterprises Create the Most Complex Software Engineering Projects
With decades of experience engineering software products and platforms for trusted global brands, Exadel provides the strategy and skills needed to execute on software projects
WALNUT CREEK, CA – November 27, 2018 – Exadel (www.exadel.com), a software engineering company, today announces its Products and Platforms Practice (P&P Practice) as part of its expansion of solution offerings which will be led by Dmitry Binunsky, VP Products and Platforms. The P&P Practice skillfully combines people, process and technology to help customers execute on the most cutting-edge software engineering projects in industries like healthcare, retail, financial services, mobile and more.
Under Exadel’s P&P Practice, customers receive a dedicated, optimized team ready to tackle the most complex software engineering projects of any size from creation to completion, including maintenance, and can also take on existing projects that need significant modernizing. Exadel’s team of experts are fully committed to each project, acting as full-time employees to the organization they work with, carefully crafting the strategy for each step of the product or platform development. Exadel also implements agile processes, of which they were early adopters. Each team sets up development environments, developing, testing, deploying and supporting the product long-term. Technology also is a critical piece to the P&P Practice, with Exadel having contributed to a variety of open source projects and more than 20 years of experience delivering highly robust and scalable architectures. Companies like GHX, Curb and Deloitte, have trusted Exadel with their product and platform development. Exadel is also behind major industry platforms like RedHat JBoss Dev Studio and Appery.io, Exadel’s mobile division helping hundreds of thousands of developers seamlessly create apps with ease.
“Building complex software products and platforms requires a unique DNA and skillset, and Exadel’s expertise is unmatched,” says Dmitry Binunsky, VP Products and Platforms at Exadel. “That’s why Deloitte called on Exadel to build its internal tax advisor product, and Curb came to us to build their widely successful taxi hailing product. We don’t augment product design and development, we own it. Our product-focused expertise and culture set us apart from all development providers, and our global customers trust us to build products that are rock solid and world class.”
With hundreds of dedicated engineers located across the United States and Eastern Europe, Exadel has the expertise to build advanced, future-proof software products and platforms that are key to driving the success of modern business.
Tweet this: .@exadel announces Products and Platforms Practice to help global #enterprises execute on best of breed #software projects
About Exadel
For more than 20 years, Exadel has been developing enterprise and custom software solutions for Fortune 500 clients, including AT&T, Samsung, Bank of America, eBay, and GE. With 18 locations and delivery centers across the US and Eastern Europe, Exadel solves the most complex software engineering problems, offering a scalable and skilled mix of onshore and offshore resources at the industry’s most competitive price. Our Digital Software Engineering Services (DSES) help chart new digital strategies that are built upon creative thinking, cutting-edge design, and technical innovation. DSES embraces the strengths of diverse global software engineering talent to create and implement strategic, cost-effective services for the new epoch of connected technology.