The Basics of Software Product Development

February 20, 2019 | 2854 views

Whether you have an elaborate or a high-level idea for a software product, you may find yourself equally confused at the thought of actually launching the development project. Especially so, if your product is a part of an Internet of Things (IoT) solution, includes big data analysis, or should be integrated with other software systems. In this article, we’ll tell you everything you should consider before embarking on your project: from theoretical particularities of software product development to hands-on organizational tips.

Spotlight

Parsons Corporation

Parsons is a digitally enabled solutions provider focused on the defense, security, and infrastructure markets. With nearly 75 years of experience, Parsons is uniquely qualified to deliver cyber/converged security, technology-based intellectual property, and other innovative services to federal, regional, and local government agencies, as well as to private industrial customers worldwide. Learn more at parsons.com and find your place with us at parsons.com/careers.

OTHER ARTICLES
AI TECH

Top 10 Low-Code App Development Platforms for Fast Custom App Creation

Article | July 20, 2022

Explore the top low-code platforms that enable fast and cost-effective app development with a strategic approach by creating and achieving MVPs and understanding the KPIs of a good platform. Contents 1 Low-Code Development Essentials: Creating and Deploying Effective MVPs 2 KPIs of a Good Low Code Development Platform 3 Top 10 Low-Code App Development Platforms 3.1 AIRKIT 3.2 BETTY BLOCKS 3.3 CREATIO 3.4 DECISIONS 3.5 INTERFACING 3.6 KISSFLOW 3.7 SKUID 3.8 TRACKVIA, INC. 3.9 ULTIMUS 3.10 XENOSS 4 Strategic Low-Code Development: Trend Forecast Analysis Low-code platforms have transformed software development, enabling fast and cost-effective app development. This article covers vital components like creating effective minimum viable products, execution strategies, and key performance indicators to look for in a good low code platform for mobile app development. The article also lists the top 10 platforms, like Airkit, Betty Blocks, and Creatio, which offer innovative solutions to reduce time-to-market and produce exceptional results. 1. Low-Code Development Essentials: Creating and Deploying Effective MVPs Creating a software product or app from scratch doesn't have to be long and tiresome when it can be fast and fun with the help of low-code application development platforms. Before you start building your app around the no code framework, you need to create a minimum viable product (MVP) that can thrive on its own in the market. Defining the attributes of your app to meet your value proposition is essential. Having a plan of execution alongside the best lowcode development tools leads to the success of your software development projects. Effective execution strategies and product development strategies are far more critical to the success of your product than the development process itself. Thanks to low-code platforms, developing and deploying the desired features in your app is faster and easier than ever before. Cutting down on the development time leaves you more time to think strategically about product design, marketing, and perhaps sales. 2. KPIs of a Good Low Code Development Platform Low-code platforms for mobile app development allow organizations to deliver new user experiences faster. While evaluating different low-code application development platforms that meet your business needs, we highly recommend these factors, KPIs, and features to look for: Drag-and-drop interface: Enables non-technical users to create apps, reducing IT burden. It boosts productivity and lowers development time and costs. Develop once and deploy anywhere: Low code mobile app development platforms create apps for multiple platforms (cross platforms) without extra coding. It cuts down on IT workload and speeds up time-to-market. Seamless integration with enterprise systems: Simplifies the integration of enterprise systems with low code app development platforms, trims development time and costs, and enhances system efficiency. Intelligent BI and analytics: Automatically analyzes data, minimizing the time and effort required for data analysis. Leverage insights for data-driven decisions and improves business outcomes. AI-enabled data enrichment: Automatically fills in missing values or adds more data points to enrich the data. Improves data quality and accuracy and reduces IT workload. Complete visibility of data with dashboards: Provides a real-time view of app performance and user behavior. Monitors and improves app performance and user experience. Compliance with international data security policies: Ensures compliance with GDPR, HIPAA, Intertek, BSI, and AICPA SOC, reducing the risk of data breaches and ensuring data privacy. Flexibility for coding and posting: Enables developers to use preferred coding languages and frameworks, improving developer productivity. Transparency and predictability with pricing: This provides transparency and predictability regarding pricing. Allows budgeting for app development and reduces the risk of cost overruns. Low-code platforms help businesses develop applications quickly and efficiently. They offer a visual development environment, integrate with existing systems, support rapid application development, cross-platform compatibility, customization, and security. They are an excellent solution for businesses wanting to build applications quickly and cost-effectively. 3. Top 10 Low-Code App Development Platforms Today's low-code development platforms, which use the most recent low code technology, put more emphasis on innovation and optimization of business processes than just quick development and deployment. When your prime focus is fast-paced app development, there are some platforms that go above and beyond to reduce time-to-market and produce exceptional results, as listed down below. 3.1 Airkit Building complex apps with beautiful front-end experiences requires custom components, workflows, and styles. Share and iterate with the team to collaborate on application development. Airkit uses a visual builder, conversation automation, agent automation, security, and integrations. Latching on to anything with pre-built integrations helps with fast and free additional functionalities. For excellent CX, use components for purpose-built CX across all platforms. Reusable components and templates for designing personalized cross platform buyer journeys. With app debuggers, you can debug, test, and preview apps and use multi-environment deployment with a single click. Manage and control security and scalability with role-based access, versioning and environments, as well as end-user authentication. 3.2 Betty Blocks Betty Blocks is an enterprise-grade no-code development platform that lets users build collaboratively with no limitations. It lets you build apps with rapid application development technology, automate processes, and maximize efficiency. It is utilized by citizen developers to build solutions that integrate with the current tech stack. Building internal applications, customer-facing apps, and process automations is simple and easy to innovate with Betty Blocks. It offers development, testing, and production environments on its public cloud as well as on-premise and cloud providers in its standard and enterprise plans, respectively. As far as free and fast integrations are concerned, it integrates with everything from its Betty Blocks Store. It also lets you build your own integrations using the API. Its intuitive drag-and-drop user interface builder allows reusability, radically shortens the time to market, and empowers the citizen development workforce. 3.3 Creatio Creatio is a no-code development platform with a compostable architecture. Creatio Studio allows for no-code application development with an extreme degree of freedom. It lets you select the available types of apps, connectors, and OOTB functionality templates to manage instances and facilitate the collaborative development process. It is packed with intuitive no-code design automation tools to create and modify pages and views, data models, workflows, and integrations in a no-code workplace. It has a library of predefined views, widgets, and templates to accelerate the design process. Optimize and manage structured and fluid processes using workflow management capabilities with advanced analytics. Add integrations with SOAP and REST integration connectors. Use AI and ML to automate your workflows and enhanced security and safety for enterprise application platform scalability. Using the collaborative process designer, accelerate process design and standardize process management with team efforts. 3.4 Decisions Decisions is a powerful low code automation platform and business process management software that is capable of building no-code and low code applications. It helps turn siloed decisions into centralized rules. Its no-code intelligent process automation platform enables the codification of business logic and automation decisions, manages workflows, finds and fixes problems, connects systems to unify operations, and designs seamless experiences. Its visual design interface helps to design, optimize, and launch complex processes without writing code. Building software apps that solve business problems by automating functions to simplify, standardize, and streamline business operations and stay compliant is easy with Decisions. 3.5 Interfacing. Intefacing offers a business transformation suite using low-code rapid application development technology. It primarily supports business process optimization, quality control, continuous improvement, change management, SOP development, digital transformation, business excellence, and stakeholder happiness. It extensively offers eFORMS, process automation, low code database table entity designer, system integration designer, tax monitoring and delegation, custom rules and actions, text and voice messaging services, custom dashboard design, and app mobile touchscreen for better control over your low code mobile app development. Interfacing allows building simple to complex consumer-focused applications and business processes in hours, not days. 3.6 Kissflow Kissflow's enterprise-grade low code application development platform lets businesses take control with no IT background. It helps digitize operations, automate processes, and modernize apps using its components. The software offers a comprehensive suite of features such as application builder, process designer, boards, reports, and analytics, and custom UI. It also provides collaboration, developer sandbox, extensive integrations, external portals, and roles-based access control for application deployment with new builds. Using a visual builder for forms with easy drag-and-drop options, work management, intuitive dashboards, communication, and collaboration, Kissflow has emerged as an industry standard in no-code development. Bring business and IT together with a DevOps approach, streamline ad-hoc requests, manage and control with a central console, and reap returns with high productivity and a lower time-to-market with Kissflow. 3.7 Skuid With Skuid, you can build low-code mobile apps from scratch for multiple platforms that are user-friendly. It allows design interdependence, composite apps, and rapid prototyping. Custom user experience options on Skuid NLX involve design decisions about interaction, navigation, and app structure. Skuid SFX helps build modern, custom Salesforce apps. It helps with lightning customization, portals and communities, and a high-performance engine. Skuid EXP for enterprise HR app creation brings features to maximize platform value, flexible deployment, and people-centered portal creation. Components on Skuid include account dashboards, customer request forms, opportunity management, quick orders, revenue and expense dashboards, dynamic forms, retail data dashboards, and a contact directory. These features help increase app adoption and innovation by 10x. 3.8 TrackVia, Inc. TrackVia helps automate processes in a business to connect and track everything that matters. It allows for seamless integration with existing ERP, CRM, BPM, financial systems, and more. It helps keep up with product and quality, compliance, custom workflows, supply chain management, project management, and field services. Its low-code app development platform enables users to build business apps without code and without limits with the help of its toolkit and a canvas. It brings intelligent workflow automation, single to multiple sandbox environments with unlimited applications and unlimited storage, and records for 1 administrator and 5 users. Its pricing plans include mobile, quick start, business, and enterprise for citizen developers in any industry. 3.9 Ultimus Ultimus offers a highly customizable platform with integration capabilities for business process management. It has a strong focus on security and compliance and offers scalability and dedicated support. Ultimus streamlines app development with a cost-effective platform, empowering non-IT business users to create custom apps easily. Its mobile-ready technology deploys on-cloud or on-premises servers, prioritizes decision-making, and improves the customer experience by eliminating isolated apps and data. A unified inbox and high-productivity portal fuses interactions with customers, employees, and partners. Ultimus avoids high upfront costs with flexible pricing options. 3.10 Xenoss Xenoss's mar-tech, low-code platform offers up to 40% cost savings and the fastest time-to-market in the industry. It has ad-tech and mar-tech parts like a bidding cluster, mission control, campaign front end, account server, logging cluster, predictor optimization engine, aggregator, reporter, DMP profile builder, DMP segment builder, DMP real-time audience DB cluster, health monitoring system, and real-time anti-fraud. Its feature set includes campaign management, budget management, creatives, supply integrations, device targeting, geographic targeting, audience targeting, dayparting, media planning, the DMP, automatic campaign optimization, manual campaign optimization, tracking, reporting, and analysis, support tools, and the data collection web SDK. It offers a customizable and integratable user-friendly platform. With a strong focus on scalability, it offers dedicated support. Its pricing is based on a per-user basis. 4. Strategic Low-Code Development: Trend Forecast Analysis Large companies will keep using low-code platforms for digital transformation in the near future because their visual interfaces and pre-built components can speed up software development. Strategic low-code development will be a must for reducing time-to-market, speeding up digital transformation, and putting security and compliance front and center. More and more people will use industry-specific solutions, AI integration, collaboration, and process automation, which will streamline operations and make them more efficient. Some of the best low code app development platforms will meet security and compliance requirements like HIPAA and PCI, so sensitive information will be safe. AI and machine learning tools will make it easier to solve problems and improve processes. This will bring IT and business operations closer than ever before. These automation platforms will be crucial to making businesses more profitable and stable because they will let them get the most done with the least amount of work.

Read More
SOFTWARE

Empowering Industry 4.0 with Artificial Intelligence

Article | July 14, 2022

The next step in industrial technology is about robotics, computers and equipment becoming connected to the Internet of Things (IoT) and enhanced by machine learning algorithms. Industry 4.0 has the potential to be a powerful driver of economic growth, predicted to add between $500 billion- $1.5 trillion in value to the global economy between 2018 and 2022, according to a report by Capgemini.

Read More
INNOVATION, SOFTWARE, FUTURE TECH

How Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming Businesses

Article | November 14, 2022

Whilst there are many people that associate AI with sci-fi novels and films, its reputation as an antagonist to fictional dystopic worlds is now becoming a thing of the past, as the technology becomes more and more integrated into our everyday lives. AI technologies have become increasingly more present in our daily lives, not just with Alexa’s in the home, but also throughout businesses everywhere, disrupting a variety of different industries with often tremendous results. The technology has helped to streamline even the most mundane of tasks whilst having a breath-taking impact on a company’s efficiency and productivity

Read More

The advances of AI in healthcare

Article | February 11, 2020

With the Government investing £250 million into the project, the Lab will consider how to use AI for the benefit of patients – whether this be the deployment of existing AI methods, the development of new technologies or the testing of their safety. Amongst other things, the initiative will aim to deliver earlier diagnoses of cancer. It is estimated that in excess of 50,000 extra patients could see their cancer being detected at an early stage, thus boosting survival rates. More specifically, a study has shown that AI is quicker in identifying brain tumour tissue than a pathologist.This would have a positive knock-on effect in other areas, such as enabling money to be saved (that otherwise would have been spent on further treatment) and reducing the workload of staff (at a time when there is a crisis in NHS workforce numbers).

Read More

Spotlight

Parsons Corporation

Parsons is a digitally enabled solutions provider focused on the defense, security, and infrastructure markets. With nearly 75 years of experience, Parsons is uniquely qualified to deliver cyber/converged security, technology-based intellectual property, and other innovative services to federal, regional, and local government agencies, as well as to private industrial customers worldwide. Learn more at parsons.com and find your place with us at parsons.com/careers.

Related News

AI TECH, AI APPLICATIONS, SOFTWARE

Tray.io Unveils Merlin AI to Instantly Transform Large Language Model Outputs Into Complete Business Processes

Businesswire | May 15, 2023

Tray.io, the leader in low-code automation and integration, today unveiled Tray Merlin AI, a new natural language automation capability in the Tray platform that instantly transforms large language model (LLM) outputs into complete business processes, without the need for LLM training or exposing customer data to the LLM. This new advancement makes the Tray platform the first iPaaS solution that brings together the power of flexible, scalable automation; support for advanced business logic; and native generative AI capabilities that anyone can use. Leveraging OpenAI technology and Tray.io’s extensive workflow, authentication, connector and API technologies, business technologists, front-line employees and developers across the enterprise can now more quickly and efficiently build, iterate on and improve sophisticated workflows that transcend the software stack. By simply asking Merlin—in the same way a team member would ask a colleague—users can obtain answers at the point-of-decision and automate critical business tasks. Additionally, Merlin eliminates the need for any IT and engineering involvement in what typically entailed weeks to months of integration effort to build automations or answer queries. This new advancement builds on Tray.io’s vision to lower the barriers that prohibit enterprise-wide automation in the face of the unintended consequences of digital transformation. All final workflows created by Tray Merlin AI are presented visually in a low-code format to allow the user to modify, improve or augment its functionality, as necessary, and share with others for reuse. Unlike many other applications that interface with LLMs, the operational capabilities of Merlin AI and the underlying Tray platform are self-contained, meaning Merlin only needs to fetch small pieces of information from the LLM on an as-needed basis during the integration building process. As a result, customer data is never exposed or sent to the LLM. “The outcomes enterprises can achieve with LLMs, such as those of OpenAI, are only as good as a user’s ability to take action on the results of the query,” said Alistair Russell, co-founder and CTO at Tray.io. “Tray Merlin AI completely changes the game as it instantly automates business processes and answers queries through natural language instruction. Think of Merlin as giving the LLM ‘brain’ a Tray ‘body’—a body that can take action without passing customer data back to the LLM and requires no further training to execute complex business tasks.” Tray.io Taps AI to Address the Unintended Consequences of Digital Transformation As businesses continue to grapple with the unintended consequences of rapid digital transformation efforts—such as technical debt, complex tech stacks and business process inefficiencies—every department is under enormous pressure to deliver fast results that not only meet customers' demands for timely, high-quality services, but also help the company remain profitable in the most efficient way possible. Leaders must overcome IT and developer bottlenecks by tapping into a hidden talent opportunity—employees who have technical skills, but are not using them in their primary job function. Equipping these employees with self-service AI automation is a critical enabler to driving digital initiatives at speed. According to Gartner®, “Almost half of all non-IT employees are now business technologists, and companies that successfully enable them are 2.6 times more likely to achieve digital business goals.”1 “Generative AI is currently one of the most disruptive forces in iPaaS,” said Alexander Wurm, Senior Analyst at Nucleus Research. “Vendors who embrace AI in their platforms provide an incredible step-change in ease-of-use that boosts the productivity of experienced users. When done well, it delivers immediate value to many users in the enterprise for which the benefits of the technology were previously out of reach. Companies who adopt iPaaS solutions with native generative AI capabilities will be at a substantial velocity, efficiency and agility advantage.” Tray Merlin AI: Natural Language Automation to Accelerate and Improve the Execution of Complex Tasks A core element of the Tray platform architecture, Merlin AI works seamlessly with Tray.io’s connector, workflow and API technologies—and other platform capabilities including data transformation, robust authentication mechanisms and support for advanced business logic—to deliver a flexible, low-code and AI-augmented automation builder. With Merlin, anyone—regardless of their level of technical expertise—can build complete integrations with the assistance of, or solely using, NLP, radically simplifying the automation building process for all users and supercharging team productivity. For example, Merlin can act as an autonomous assistant capable of executing complex tasks, such as collecting or moving information across disparate systems, answering questions or building automated workflows to complete a business process. “AI is revolutionizing automation, and Tray.io is at the forefront of this movement. The arrival of generative AI and the pace of innovation it enables will spell the end of the iPaaS architectures that were built for a different time,” said Rich Waldron, co-founder and CEO at Tray.io. “Tray Merlin AI brings together the power of flexible, scalable automation and AI to accelerate and improve automation outcomes for our customers, enabling them to solve business problems better, faster and more independently than ever before.” Tray Merlin AI powers the following new capabilities to accelerate automation and integration projects across the enterprise, while reducing the burden on business technologists and developers: Securely build out automation details and iterate or improve existing processes: Marketing Ops teams can refine their lead delivery processes by reducing the time it takes to deliver high-value leads to sales reps, enabling them to respond to prospects promptly. Using just natural language instructions, the person building marketing automations can improve their current process by asking Merlin to build a workflow to capture lead scoring data from Marketo, assign qualified leads to reps in Salesforce immediately any time it’s over a certain threshold, build the Outreach sequence and notify reps via Slack or Teams of the newly qualified lead. When finished, all the steps are displayed in the low-code visual builder through which the user can review and make any modifications, if required. Quickly build or augment more substantial workflows: Business technologists who are proficient at building on the Tray platform can type their request and parameters and Merlin will automatically build a workflow with the relevant business logic. Sales and customer success teams who want to deliver a more frictionless customer experience by streamlining the pre- and post-sales processes, can use natural language instructions to create a workflow that will automatically update their project management system every time a deal closes with the relevant client information from their CRM and notify the professional services team via email. With Merlin, teams can ensure there’s no delay in project execution, which results in higher levels of customer satisfaction. Obtain answers at the point-of-decision with on-demand, AI-powered automation: For non-technical employees, such as department managers, C-level executives and business users, who are not and do not need to be familiar with the Tray platform, Merlin can be used to quickly answer urgent business queries. A CMO seeking to optimize social media investments can query Merlin to identify the top lead sources for the largest “Closed Won” accounts by revenue and cross-reference the results with LinkedIn followers. To accomplish this, Merlin integrates the company’s CRM, marketing automation platform and social media management platform to deliver the result instantly. Additionally, sharing these results with the marketing leadership team via Slack or Teams can be built into the workflow based on the CMO’s natural language instruction. Merlin automatically knows when and where to search for authentications, displays all the actions it plans to carry out and obtains confirmation from the user before executing these actions. By tapping into the power of AI via a natural language interface, Tray.io further unlocks the full potential of automation and makes building automated workflows across many use cases even more accessible to all employees, significantly increasing employee efficiency and productivity. “Builders in our organization already rely on Tray as they rapidly develop the low-code workflows needed to improve operational processes across our business,” said Brendon Ritz, Senior Director of Marketing Ops at ThoughtSpot, the leading AI-powered analytics company. “With the addition of Merlin AI to the Tray platform, our business technologists can interface with Tray using natural language instruction to build faster and build better. Even more impactful is the ability for us to put the power of automation in the hands of our front-line employees and managers so they can instantly get answers to business queries that would have otherwise required weeks or months of development to work out the required integrations.” ​​About Tray.io Tray.io is a low-code automation platform that can easily turn unique business processes into repeatable and scalable workflows that evolve whenever business needs change. Unlike iPaaS solutions, which are expensive, complex, and code-intensive, Tray.io’s flexible self-service platform makes it simple to build integrations using any API and connect enterprise applications at scale without incremental costs. Process innovation is today’s competitive advantage since companies can no longer differentiate on their tech stack alone. The promise of SaaS led to an avalanche of siloed point solutions that require businesses to force their processes into rigid, predetermined schema. The Tray Platform removes these limitations, empowering both non-technical and technical users to create sophisticated workflow automations that streamline data movement and actions across multiple applications. Freed from tedious and repetitive tasks, product leaders and IT are able to uplevel their skill set with automation to unlock their full potential and do things in a way that’s right for their business. Love your work. Automate the rest.™

Read More

AI TECH, SOFTWARE, FUTURE TECH

Appy Pie Introduces AI-Powered Website Builder to Simplify Website Development

Prnewswire | April 25, 2023

Appy Pie Website Builder , a leading no-code website development platform, has introduced its latest offering, the Appy Pie AI Website Builder. The platform is designed to simplify the web development process for businesses and individuals of all sizes. Instead of creating a website from scratch, users can simply input their website requirements using voice or text commands. The AI-powered website builder then takes over, creating a professional-looking website that meets the user's specific needs, without the user having to code. Appy Pie AI Website Builder removes the requirement for technical expertise, thereby making website creation more straightforward and user-friendly for individuals who lack coding skills. Through the use of voice or text commands, users can construct websites without having to invest significant time in coding or troubleshooting. The technology leverages advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML) algorithms to generate website content and design templates. "We are delighted to unveil the introduction of the Appy Pie AI Website Builder. Our innovative product revolutionizes website development for individuals of diverse backgrounds and expertise by offering an effortless and effective approach that leverages cutting-edge AI technology," said Abhinav Girdhar, Founder and CEO of Appy Pie. "Our primary commitment has always been to enable people to establish their online presence, and this groundbreaking tool represents a significant stride towards fulfilling that goal," he adds. The Appy Pie AI Website Builder offers a user-friendly interface that includes a variety of customizable templates and features. This platform enables users to create websites that reflect their unique brand identity, regardless of whether they are creating a website for a business, personal blog, or online store. Moreover, the Appy Pie AI Website Builder offers e-commerce features, including online payment processing and shopping cart functionality. With its versatility, this platform has the potential to cater to a wide range of users and their website development needs. About Appy Pie Appy Pie , a Trademark of Appy Pie LLP, is a no-code development platform that helps transform business ideas into reality without technical knowledge. It is an all-inclusive suite of the best no-code tools like an app builder, website builder, workflow automation platform, graphic design software, chatbot builder, help desk software, and live chat software. Appy Pie's App Maker has been recognized as one of the highest-rated app builders globally ( G2 ) for its unique features, ease of use, and affordability, and is considered one of the most comprehensive no-code application development software for businesses of all sizes ( Capterra ). Appy Pie is also the fastest-growing cloud-based DIY Mobile App Builder in the world ( GetApp ).

Read More

INNOVATION, SOFTWARE, FUTURE TECH

BlockSpan Launches NFT API Platform to Accelerate Software Development on the Blockchain

Newswire | April 18, 2023

BlockSpan, an emerging Web3 innovator founded by leading enterprise data platform architects, is thrilled to announce the launch of its NFT API platform that gives software companies and devs building blockchain applications instant access to real-time and historical NFT and token metadata including cached images. "Our mission and focus is to make blockchain app development as simple and straightforward as possible while unlocking highly-accurate NFT and token metadata to enable software companies to create and deliver powerful apps in days, not months or even years," said Jon Pastor, Co-Founder of BlockSpan. "BlockSpan enables app developers to leverage the full potential of blockchain technology without sacrificing productivity or having to wade through overly complex codebases." More specifically, the BlockSpan NFT API platform removes the data middleman, resulting in higher-quality data pulled directly from leading blockchains, NFT collections, and tokens. It also makes scaling to millions of users safe, cost-effective, and seamless. This is done by tapping into more than 400 million ERC721 and ERC1155 tokens, 500 thousand token contracts, and 1 billion token transfer transactions. How Builders Get Started with BlockSpan Getting started takes just moments, as builders are prompted to create a free BlockSpan account and then receive an API Key immediately after registering. Once an API Key is received, it can be immediately implemented to access: Real-time and historical NFT metadata from leading blockchains, including Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, and Optimism. Highly accurate token data, including name, symbol, price, address, type, date created, total supply, and more. Cached images stored on IPFS or other cloud services. Easy integration with existing Web3 development frameworks. The ability to query multiple blockchains at once via a single endpoint. Robust error handling capabilities for seamless user experience. Extensive documentation and 1-on-1 customer support. The BlockSpan platform also includes a suite of analytics that makes it easy to identify industry trends, popular NFT collections, and other metrics that can help builders better understand their target audience's wants and needs. In doing so, BlockSpan is pioneering the way to make blockchain development more affordable, while giving builders tools that they can trust and depend on. For further information on BlockSpan and its offerings, visit blockspan.com, get regular updates on Twitter, and join the Discord community. About BlockSpan Founded by leading enterprise data platform builders in 2022, BlockSpan is a Web3 innovator focused on delivering easy-to-implement API solutions for the blockchain. With the release of the BlockSpan NFT API platform, software companies building on the blockchain have instant access to highly accurate real-time and historical NFT data (and cached images), empowering them to build scalable, cost-efficient apps in just days.

Read More

AI TECH, AI APPLICATIONS, SOFTWARE

Tray.io Unveils Merlin AI to Instantly Transform Large Language Model Outputs Into Complete Business Processes

Businesswire | May 15, 2023

Tray.io, the leader in low-code automation and integration, today unveiled Tray Merlin AI, a new natural language automation capability in the Tray platform that instantly transforms large language model (LLM) outputs into complete business processes, without the need for LLM training or exposing customer data to the LLM. This new advancement makes the Tray platform the first iPaaS solution that brings together the power of flexible, scalable automation; support for advanced business logic; and native generative AI capabilities that anyone can use. Leveraging OpenAI technology and Tray.io’s extensive workflow, authentication, connector and API technologies, business technologists, front-line employees and developers across the enterprise can now more quickly and efficiently build, iterate on and improve sophisticated workflows that transcend the software stack. By simply asking Merlin—in the same way a team member would ask a colleague—users can obtain answers at the point-of-decision and automate critical business tasks. Additionally, Merlin eliminates the need for any IT and engineering involvement in what typically entailed weeks to months of integration effort to build automations or answer queries. This new advancement builds on Tray.io’s vision to lower the barriers that prohibit enterprise-wide automation in the face of the unintended consequences of digital transformation. All final workflows created by Tray Merlin AI are presented visually in a low-code format to allow the user to modify, improve or augment its functionality, as necessary, and share with others for reuse. Unlike many other applications that interface with LLMs, the operational capabilities of Merlin AI and the underlying Tray platform are self-contained, meaning Merlin only needs to fetch small pieces of information from the LLM on an as-needed basis during the integration building process. As a result, customer data is never exposed or sent to the LLM. “The outcomes enterprises can achieve with LLMs, such as those of OpenAI, are only as good as a user’s ability to take action on the results of the query,” said Alistair Russell, co-founder and CTO at Tray.io. “Tray Merlin AI completely changes the game as it instantly automates business processes and answers queries through natural language instruction. Think of Merlin as giving the LLM ‘brain’ a Tray ‘body’—a body that can take action without passing customer data back to the LLM and requires no further training to execute complex business tasks.” Tray.io Taps AI to Address the Unintended Consequences of Digital Transformation As businesses continue to grapple with the unintended consequences of rapid digital transformation efforts—such as technical debt, complex tech stacks and business process inefficiencies—every department is under enormous pressure to deliver fast results that not only meet customers' demands for timely, high-quality services, but also help the company remain profitable in the most efficient way possible. Leaders must overcome IT and developer bottlenecks by tapping into a hidden talent opportunity—employees who have technical skills, but are not using them in their primary job function. Equipping these employees with self-service AI automation is a critical enabler to driving digital initiatives at speed. According to Gartner®, “Almost half of all non-IT employees are now business technologists, and companies that successfully enable them are 2.6 times more likely to achieve digital business goals.”1 “Generative AI is currently one of the most disruptive forces in iPaaS,” said Alexander Wurm, Senior Analyst at Nucleus Research. “Vendors who embrace AI in their platforms provide an incredible step-change in ease-of-use that boosts the productivity of experienced users. When done well, it delivers immediate value to many users in the enterprise for which the benefits of the technology were previously out of reach. Companies who adopt iPaaS solutions with native generative AI capabilities will be at a substantial velocity, efficiency and agility advantage.” Tray Merlin AI: Natural Language Automation to Accelerate and Improve the Execution of Complex Tasks A core element of the Tray platform architecture, Merlin AI works seamlessly with Tray.io’s connector, workflow and API technologies—and other platform capabilities including data transformation, robust authentication mechanisms and support for advanced business logic—to deliver a flexible, low-code and AI-augmented automation builder. With Merlin, anyone—regardless of their level of technical expertise—can build complete integrations with the assistance of, or solely using, NLP, radically simplifying the automation building process for all users and supercharging team productivity. For example, Merlin can act as an autonomous assistant capable of executing complex tasks, such as collecting or moving information across disparate systems, answering questions or building automated workflows to complete a business process. “AI is revolutionizing automation, and Tray.io is at the forefront of this movement. The arrival of generative AI and the pace of innovation it enables will spell the end of the iPaaS architectures that were built for a different time,” said Rich Waldron, co-founder and CEO at Tray.io. “Tray Merlin AI brings together the power of flexible, scalable automation and AI to accelerate and improve automation outcomes for our customers, enabling them to solve business problems better, faster and more independently than ever before.” Tray Merlin AI powers the following new capabilities to accelerate automation and integration projects across the enterprise, while reducing the burden on business technologists and developers: Securely build out automation details and iterate or improve existing processes: Marketing Ops teams can refine their lead delivery processes by reducing the time it takes to deliver high-value leads to sales reps, enabling them to respond to prospects promptly. Using just natural language instructions, the person building marketing automations can improve their current process by asking Merlin to build a workflow to capture lead scoring data from Marketo, assign qualified leads to reps in Salesforce immediately any time it’s over a certain threshold, build the Outreach sequence and notify reps via Slack or Teams of the newly qualified lead. When finished, all the steps are displayed in the low-code visual builder through which the user can review and make any modifications, if required. Quickly build or augment more substantial workflows: Business technologists who are proficient at building on the Tray platform can type their request and parameters and Merlin will automatically build a workflow with the relevant business logic. Sales and customer success teams who want to deliver a more frictionless customer experience by streamlining the pre- and post-sales processes, can use natural language instructions to create a workflow that will automatically update their project management system every time a deal closes with the relevant client information from their CRM and notify the professional services team via email. With Merlin, teams can ensure there’s no delay in project execution, which results in higher levels of customer satisfaction. Obtain answers at the point-of-decision with on-demand, AI-powered automation: For non-technical employees, such as department managers, C-level executives and business users, who are not and do not need to be familiar with the Tray platform, Merlin can be used to quickly answer urgent business queries. A CMO seeking to optimize social media investments can query Merlin to identify the top lead sources for the largest “Closed Won” accounts by revenue and cross-reference the results with LinkedIn followers. To accomplish this, Merlin integrates the company’s CRM, marketing automation platform and social media management platform to deliver the result instantly. Additionally, sharing these results with the marketing leadership team via Slack or Teams can be built into the workflow based on the CMO’s natural language instruction. Merlin automatically knows when and where to search for authentications, displays all the actions it plans to carry out and obtains confirmation from the user before executing these actions. By tapping into the power of AI via a natural language interface, Tray.io further unlocks the full potential of automation and makes building automated workflows across many use cases even more accessible to all employees, significantly increasing employee efficiency and productivity. “Builders in our organization already rely on Tray as they rapidly develop the low-code workflows needed to improve operational processes across our business,” said Brendon Ritz, Senior Director of Marketing Ops at ThoughtSpot, the leading AI-powered analytics company. “With the addition of Merlin AI to the Tray platform, our business technologists can interface with Tray using natural language instruction to build faster and build better. Even more impactful is the ability for us to put the power of automation in the hands of our front-line employees and managers so they can instantly get answers to business queries that would have otherwise required weeks or months of development to work out the required integrations.” ​​About Tray.io Tray.io is a low-code automation platform that can easily turn unique business processes into repeatable and scalable workflows that evolve whenever business needs change. Unlike iPaaS solutions, which are expensive, complex, and code-intensive, Tray.io’s flexible self-service platform makes it simple to build integrations using any API and connect enterprise applications at scale without incremental costs. Process innovation is today’s competitive advantage since companies can no longer differentiate on their tech stack alone. The promise of SaaS led to an avalanche of siloed point solutions that require businesses to force their processes into rigid, predetermined schema. The Tray Platform removes these limitations, empowering both non-technical and technical users to create sophisticated workflow automations that streamline data movement and actions across multiple applications. Freed from tedious and repetitive tasks, product leaders and IT are able to uplevel their skill set with automation to unlock their full potential and do things in a way that’s right for their business. Love your work. Automate the rest.™

Read More

AI TECH, SOFTWARE, FUTURE TECH

Appy Pie Introduces AI-Powered Website Builder to Simplify Website Development

Prnewswire | April 25, 2023

Appy Pie Website Builder , a leading no-code website development platform, has introduced its latest offering, the Appy Pie AI Website Builder. The platform is designed to simplify the web development process for businesses and individuals of all sizes. Instead of creating a website from scratch, users can simply input their website requirements using voice or text commands. The AI-powered website builder then takes over, creating a professional-looking website that meets the user's specific needs, without the user having to code. Appy Pie AI Website Builder removes the requirement for technical expertise, thereby making website creation more straightforward and user-friendly for individuals who lack coding skills. Through the use of voice or text commands, users can construct websites without having to invest significant time in coding or troubleshooting. The technology leverages advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML) algorithms to generate website content and design templates. "We are delighted to unveil the introduction of the Appy Pie AI Website Builder. Our innovative product revolutionizes website development for individuals of diverse backgrounds and expertise by offering an effortless and effective approach that leverages cutting-edge AI technology," said Abhinav Girdhar, Founder and CEO of Appy Pie. "Our primary commitment has always been to enable people to establish their online presence, and this groundbreaking tool represents a significant stride towards fulfilling that goal," he adds. The Appy Pie AI Website Builder offers a user-friendly interface that includes a variety of customizable templates and features. This platform enables users to create websites that reflect their unique brand identity, regardless of whether they are creating a website for a business, personal blog, or online store. Moreover, the Appy Pie AI Website Builder offers e-commerce features, including online payment processing and shopping cart functionality. With its versatility, this platform has the potential to cater to a wide range of users and their website development needs. About Appy Pie Appy Pie , a Trademark of Appy Pie LLP, is a no-code development platform that helps transform business ideas into reality without technical knowledge. It is an all-inclusive suite of the best no-code tools like an app builder, website builder, workflow automation platform, graphic design software, chatbot builder, help desk software, and live chat software. Appy Pie's App Maker has been recognized as one of the highest-rated app builders globally ( G2 ) for its unique features, ease of use, and affordability, and is considered one of the most comprehensive no-code application development software for businesses of all sizes ( Capterra ). Appy Pie is also the fastest-growing cloud-based DIY Mobile App Builder in the world ( GetApp ).

Read More

INNOVATION, SOFTWARE, FUTURE TECH

BlockSpan Launches NFT API Platform to Accelerate Software Development on the Blockchain

Newswire | April 18, 2023

BlockSpan, an emerging Web3 innovator founded by leading enterprise data platform architects, is thrilled to announce the launch of its NFT API platform that gives software companies and devs building blockchain applications instant access to real-time and historical NFT and token metadata including cached images. "Our mission and focus is to make blockchain app development as simple and straightforward as possible while unlocking highly-accurate NFT and token metadata to enable software companies to create and deliver powerful apps in days, not months or even years," said Jon Pastor, Co-Founder of BlockSpan. "BlockSpan enables app developers to leverage the full potential of blockchain technology without sacrificing productivity or having to wade through overly complex codebases." More specifically, the BlockSpan NFT API platform removes the data middleman, resulting in higher-quality data pulled directly from leading blockchains, NFT collections, and tokens. It also makes scaling to millions of users safe, cost-effective, and seamless. This is done by tapping into more than 400 million ERC721 and ERC1155 tokens, 500 thousand token contracts, and 1 billion token transfer transactions. How Builders Get Started with BlockSpan Getting started takes just moments, as builders are prompted to create a free BlockSpan account and then receive an API Key immediately after registering. Once an API Key is received, it can be immediately implemented to access: Real-time and historical NFT metadata from leading blockchains, including Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, and Optimism. Highly accurate token data, including name, symbol, price, address, type, date created, total supply, and more. Cached images stored on IPFS or other cloud services. Easy integration with existing Web3 development frameworks. The ability to query multiple blockchains at once via a single endpoint. Robust error handling capabilities for seamless user experience. Extensive documentation and 1-on-1 customer support. The BlockSpan platform also includes a suite of analytics that makes it easy to identify industry trends, popular NFT collections, and other metrics that can help builders better understand their target audience's wants and needs. In doing so, BlockSpan is pioneering the way to make blockchain development more affordable, while giving builders tools that they can trust and depend on. For further information on BlockSpan and its offerings, visit blockspan.com, get regular updates on Twitter, and join the Discord community. About BlockSpan Founded by leading enterprise data platform builders in 2022, BlockSpan is a Web3 innovator focused on delivering easy-to-implement API solutions for the blockchain. With the release of the BlockSpan NFT API platform, software companies building on the blockchain have instant access to highly accurate real-time and historical NFT data (and cached images), empowering them to build scalable, cost-efficient apps in just days.

Read More

Events