Able-One Blog

Able-One is lucky to have offices in two great technology communities in Ontario. Our head office is based in Kitchener, which is one of the premier tech hot beds, not just in Canada, but in the world. We are also happy to have an office in London, an up and coming start-up community. There are many resources available to organizations in London to help them grow and succeed.

1. TechAlliance

TechAlliance is the Regional Innovation Centre for London and surrounding areas as part of the Ontario Network of Entrepreneurs. TechAlliance offers services to help start, grow and connect companies in many industries including digital media, the life sciences, advanced manufacturing, and clean technology. These services include access to valuable expertise, seed funding, educational programs and workshops, industry-specific events, and a comprehensive membership program.

2. Hacker Studios

Hacker Studios is a startup hub, providing both space and support for growing companies, and a place for a community of entrepreneurs to gather. Able-One has an office in London within Hacker Studios. They offer co-working and private office space that’s built to grow.  It is not just the space that helps entrepreneurs grow their business. Hacker Studios offers programs, services, and events that help entrepreneurs build better businesses.

3. Western University

The main initiative at the Western University is Propel. Their mandate is to expose youth to the concepts of entrepreneurship, encourage testing of ideas through hands-on experience, and equip with the resources and skills necessary to succeed. Propel can offer co-working space, mentorship, access to funding, education, training, pitch competitions, and community events.

4. Fanshawe College

The main entrepreneur organization at Fanshawe is Leap. It is a campus-linked accelerator located inside the school. It has space in the student unions building and is the main hub for organizing events and initiatives.

5. Small Business Centre

The Small Business Centre in London provides tools and resources that entrepreneurs need to evaluate their idea and decide if entrepreneurship is right for you. The Centre offers a full range of support services, including workshops, seminars, government programs, advisory assistance, and networking events.

There are many resources and organizations available for startups in London. We are proud to be part of this growing community as well.  We are looking to support startups in London. This support could range from mentorship to Able-One being a potential sales partner.  Please contact us if you are interested in talking.

By Eden Watt, Vice President, Application Innovation, Able-One Systems

If there’s one common challenge that I hear repeatedly from IT leaders that I meet, it’s how to integrate and merge disparate applications, especially after acquisitions or line of business changes.  

The complexity of systems managed by many organizations today can be mind boggling. This happens over many years of technology maturation, especially as the organization adds new products and services, or additional business units are added through mergers and acquisitions. Rather than acquiring new software to meet the comprehensive and evolving needs of the organization, this typically involves extending the original software or working with multiple software applications for different business areas and stitching them together.

Gartner has coined the term “Postmodern ERP” to be a “more federated, loosely coupled ERP environment with much (or even all) of the functionality sourced as cloud services or via business process outsourcers”. This growing trend indicates that the days of purchasing one monolithic ERP package to service all the processing needs of the business is coming to an end. Applications that have served the business well over many years do not necessarily need to be replaced as organizations start to embrace new cloud and mobile technologies as they expand their capabilities.

Case Study: Challenger, a Transportation & Logistics Company 

The approach Challenger has taken to address their growing business is a great example of how to achieve this with the least amount of disruption to the business.

In business for 40 years, Challenger is one of Canada’s largest privately held trucking fleets offering transportation, logistics, warehousing and distribution services. With their traditional business model, Challenger started with an RPG-based software package as their Transportation Management System (TMS) from Innovative Computer Corp (ICC) and Infinium for financials. They have knowledgeable in-house developers to maintain these applications which have been stable and finely tuned to their needs for many years, especially in the FTL area of their business.

However, the Challenger business has grown significantly both organically and through acquisitions and they now offer complete supply chain including truckload, LTL, LCV and small parcel transport services, 3pl and 4pl support, intermodal, container shipping, air freight and ocean freight cargo shipping internationally.  

To service logistics and other business areas, Challenger uses cloud-based Mercury Gate which allows customers to sign into TMS and provides more customer-facing capabilities. However, their financial systems and LTL business are still handled on premise with IBM i based Infinium and ICC. In order to manage the flow of invoice information between the two systems, Challenger’s invoicing department has been rekeying information between the two systems on a daily basis. 

Recently, Challenger acquired looksoftware’s soarchitect to develop web services integration to address manual procedures for integration between their on premise and cloud-based systems. This tool is unique in that you can target the RPG-based screens to create a web services layer, reducing the need to rewrite or duplicate complex logic for interfacing with legacy systems.

After a short learning curve, Les Peebles from Challenger has been able to very quickly introduce automation in two key areas for the invoicing team which is saving them considerable time and reduction of errors. 

This is the first in a series of blogs on PHP for the Enterprise by Eden Watt, Able-One VP of Application Innovation with Guest Blogger, Amy Anderson, Zend Director of Business Development.

With millions of sites and millions of developers using PHP, it’s a technology that should interest everyone in IT. This first blog provides an introduction and in subsequent blogs, we’ll review the features of PHP and Zend Server that are most valuable for business users.

PHP is an open source development language designed for web and mobile applications.  Originally, built as a scripting language for “personal home pages” (as in, “PHP”) the language has proven itself adaptable, resilient, and future-proof. According to UBM, “More than 240 million websites, including those of ADP, Facebook, NYSE Euronext and Toyota, are written largely in PHP”.

Many organizations have some PHP scripting embedded within their websites – especially since popular content management solutions, such as Wordpress, Magento, Joomla, and Drupal, use PHP under the covers and to extend the base package – while others may have a larger, more strategic commitment to an Enterprise PHP platform or framework for their applications. 

This Chart shows widespread use of PHP as a server-side programming language for deploying web applications.

PHP continues to expand in popularity and usage because it has matured along with the Internet itself.  As businesses have developed requirements for increased levels of security, performance, and reliability, PHP has stepped up to the challenge.  And because it is a dynamic language, it is well suited to mobile development as well.

There are many use cases for PHP, including Content Management Systems such as Drupal, Wordpress, and Joomla, Commerce solutions such as Magento and X-Cart, and Customer Relationship Management solutions such as SugarCRM and OroCRM.  A fourth use case is perhaps the most relevant for a majority of established businesses: application modernization.  

As various computing trends have come and gone—from mainframe to client-server to web-enabled—businesses have invested in application environments that all too often resulted in a dead end for the business logic and data structures contained within those systems.  And yet, those environments continue to deliver value to business through high productivity and low total cost of ownership.  By using PHP as a front-end to those back office applications, businesses can leave the business logic and data where it is, and still deliver the information business users demand on the devices that are currently trending, whether it’s a tablet, a phone, or a smart watch.

PHP brings many advantages to these solutions.  First, the cost of entry is relatively low as compared to heavier application environments like Java.  Second, there are millions of PHP developers worldwide, and they are well networked together, so businesses can identify and hire critical skills regardless of location. 

And finally, PHP has evolved into a robust, enterprise-class environment that delivers the highest levels of security, performance, and reliability.  Zend Technologies, whose founders were two of the original authors of PHP, delivers a commercial-grade application platform for PHP that provides enterprise class features, improved ease of use, and of course, service and support that is unparalleled in the PHP community.

If you’re interested in finding out if PHP and Zend Technologies is a good fit for your enterprise, please get in touch with us.

The cyber security and information security space is constantly evolving, and the number of incidents has significantly increased in recent years.

According to PWC’s 2015 Global State of Information Security Survey 2015, the total number of global incidents increased 66% in 2014 to 42.8 million incidents from 28.9 million in 2013.

In addition to keeping up with traditional information and cyber security, professionals now have to stay abreast of issues around mobile, wearables, internet of things and more.

Here are 10 of our favourite security blogs to cover a range of security topics ranging from recent breaches, privacy, techniques, strategy and more.

1. TechRepublic Security

The TechRepublic Security blog is targeted to IT decision makers and professionals who need practical strategies and guidance on threats surrounding cyber security.

www.techrepublic.com/topic/security

2. Wired – Threat Level

General news and commentary on online security, threat alerts and privacy make up the majority of articles on this blog.

www.wired.com/category/threatlevel

3. Information Week - Dark Reading

Dark Reading is a news site that’s updated on a daily basis with news on IT security, recent breaches, software issues, and enterprise challenges.

www.darkreading.com

4. Google Online Security Blog

This office blog from Google contains the latest news and insights from Google on security and safety on the Internet and mobile, including Android.

googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.ca

5. PC Mag – Security Watch

The security section of PC Mag is suitable for both security professionals and end users. With both articles and videos, there’s a large amount of regularly updated content that’s editorial quality.

securitywatch.pcmag.com

6. Panda Security Blog

This blog from Panda Security, covers everything from mobile to internet security, breaches and tips on managing

www.pandasecurity.com/mediacenter

7. CIO – Security

This blog features security product reviews and news coverage of the industry. The quality and depth of the articles is suitable for IT professionals and other security professionals.

www.cio.com/category/security

8. Info-Security Magazine

Info-Security is an online magazine focused on strategy, news and in-depth techniques for cyber security professionals. The site includes white papers, guides and webinars and articles in topics from encryption to malware, to digital forensics.

www.infosecurity-magazine.com

9. TripWire – State of Security

This blog is regularly updated with news, trends and insights on recent breaches and privacy issues. In 2014, Tripwire’s The State of Security was named the “Best Corporate Blog” and “Most Entertaining Security Blog.”

www.tripwire.com/state-of-security

10. E-Hacking

This is a community blog for information security experts and ethical hackers that help them to learn latest tools and techniques to achieve their goals.

www.ehacking.net

Bonus: 11. Informatica

Informatica is one of the security partners we work who helps protect billions of dollars, millions of hours of productivity and longstanding reputations of businesses. Their cybersecurity blog provides commentary on a range of issues from breaches to trends and more.

informatica.ca/content/blog

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