This fresh edition of the Betica Blog news digest contains a few interesting stories from an endlessly fascinating software development world. If interested, here is a link to last month’s article. Use these insights and ideas at your own shop to stay on the forefront of an ever-changing industry.
The German company, Siemens, plans to open a software development center in Atlanta with the goal of making railroading more efficient. Called the Data Analytics and Applications Center, the company’s efforts are dubbed with the “Internet of Trains” moniker. News about Siemens’ Atlanta investment was reported on in the Atlanta Business Chronicle.
Reducing downtime while increasing the mileage for each train requires an increased investment in digital technology with the hopes of modernizing railway infrastructure as well as the trains and boxcars themselves. Siemens is known all over the world for their power transmission and signaling and control technology used in the rail industry. Their Internet of Trains solution also focuses on data analytics and predictive software.
The company’s Director of Mobility Delivery Services Gerhard Kress commented on the goals of the project. “We are heading towards next-generation maintenance. It is all about increasing up-time and avoiding unplanned downtime. If we predict incidents early enough we, and our customers, can react accordingly,” said Kress.
Siemens’ work is another example of how data analytics and Web-enabled devices are ushering in an era of innovation in many different industries.
The venerable COBOL language surprisingly still lurks in many legacy systems in the financial industry and government agencies. The United States Department of Veterans Affairs hopes to finally enter the 21st Century when it comes to its technology infrastructure, and is looking to outsource the reengineering of their application inventory. News about the VA’s planned migration was published earlier in April at FedScoop.
Acting VA CIO Rob Thomas commented on the reasons behind his department’s move away from internal application development. “We’re going full into commercial — we’re going to be doing software-as-a-service, we’re going to be doing platform-as-a-service, infrastructure-as-a-service. We’re getting out of the software development business — it’s not a core competency. I see a future for us where we go digital platform both on the benefits side and the health side,” Thomas explained.
A business opportunity lurks for software development shops and SaaS providers hoping to gain customers from the government sector. A measure of COBOL knowledge would also help these companies when reverse engineering existing systems.
This week, Forbes published another article by Scott Stiner, CEO of UM Technologies discussing how to incorporate design thinking into the software architecture process. We covered Stiner’s approach to Agile software development in last month’s news digest.
Stiner feels design thinking helps quickly create solutions to solve problems while building a superior user experience. “The Design Thinking process also creates a stronger relationship with the client, considering developers will work closely with the client to understand that client’s core customers. The advantages are many in this regard, and they help speed up the overall development process,” said Stiner.
The entire article is filled with useful insights to help your team build better applications that make your customers happy – and satisfied clients lead to more business opportunities.
Keep coming back to the Betica Blog for additional insights and news from the evolving software development world.
Posted on April 28, 2017 Categories Software Development Tags COBOL, Development News, Internet of Trains, Siemens, Software, Software Development, User Experience, UX