Tag Archives: Box.Net

Business, Technology

Cloud Document Mgt: Box Overhaul Architecture With Paperless Services

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Building on the Cloud: Gehry and Box Overhaul Architecture With New Paperless Service | Wired Design | Wired.com.

I read this article, and thought instantly, this is where we were leaning toward a few years ago with a prototype project I worked on for a large metropolitan city, and electronically expediting the process of business occupancy workflows.

I’ve read Box.net current collaboration platform, and it is similar to what I was working on with an internal electronic document management system built upon EMC Documentum.  That system I worked on in 1993, was an internal enterprise product that included collaboration with multiple teams, approval workflows, i.e. gateways to the next workflow, as well as code allowing the documents to be dynamically edited, appended, reading from corporate databases, and integrating that data into the final product documents, which then would be distributed automatically on multiple platforms once the last approval was received.  The documents were distributed to third parties such as FactSet, and other major 3rd party outlets, as well as internal client web platforms

If Box can get those workflows incorporated into the production of any products, and incorporate all parties from all stakeholders from clients, subject matter experts, engineers, validators, e.g. sign off stakeholders, including the public sector, all engineers, which sign off on permits.

Other products may be able to be incorporated, such as the shipment of products, just like eBay has exposed their incorporation of both the U.S. Post Office, as well as PayPal, now a subsidiary of eBay.

Business, Technology

Tablet Developers Make Business Intelligence Tools using Google as a Data Warehouse: Completing with Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft SQL Server

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And, he shoots, and scores.  I called it, sort of.  Google came out of the closet today as a data warehouse vendor, at least they need a community of developers to connect the dots to help build an amazing Business Intelligence suite.

Google came out with a Google Docs API today, which using languages from Objective-C (iOS), C#, to Java so you can use Google as your Data Warehouse for any size business. All you need to do is write an ETL program which uploads and downloads tables from your local database to Google Docs, and you create your own Business Intelligence User Interface for the creation and viewing of Charts & Graphs.  It looks like they’ve changed strategies, or this was the plan all along.

Initially I thought that Google Fusion was going to be the table editing tool to manipulate your data that was transferred from your transactional database using the Google Docs API.  Today they released a Google Docs API and developers can create their own ETL drivers and a Business Intelligence User Interface that can run on any platform from an Android Tablet, iPad, or Windows Tablet.

A few days ago, I wrote the article, which looked like they were going to use a tool called Google Fusion, which was in Beta at the time to manipulate tabular data, and eventually extend it to create common BI components, such as graphs, charts, edit tables, etc.

A few gotchas: Google Docs on Apple iPad is version 1.1.1 released 9/28/12, so we are talking very early days, and the Google Docs API was released today.   I would imagine since you can also use C#, someone can make a Windows application on the desktop to manipulate the data tables, create and view graphs, so a Windows Tablet can be used.  The API also has Java compatibility, so from any Unix box, or any platform, Java is write once, run anywhere, wherever your transitional database lives, a developer is able to write a driver to transfer the data to Google Docs dynamically, and then use Google Docs API for Business Intelligence.  You can even write an ETL driver which all it does is rapidly transfer data, like an ODBC, or JDBC driver and use any business intelligence tools you have on your desktop, or a nightly ETL.  However, I can see developers creating business intelligence tools on Android, iPad, or Windows tables to modify tables, create and view charts, etc., using custom BI tool sets and their data warehouse now becomes Google Docs.

Please reference an article I wrote a few days back, “Google is Going to be the Next Public and Private Data Warehouse“.

At that time, Google Fusion was marked as Beta on 10/13/2012.  Google has since stripped off the word Beta, but doesn’t matter.  Its even better with the Google API to Google Docs.  Google Fusion could be your starter User Interface, however, if your Android, iOS (Apple iPad), and Windows developers really embrace this API, all of the big database companies like IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft may have their market share eroded to some extent, if not a great extent.

Update 10/19:

Hey Gs (Guys and Gals), I forgot to mention, you can also make your own video or music streaming applications perhaps, using the basic calls of get and receive file other companies are already doing such as AWS, Box, etc. It’s a simple get / send API, so not sure if it’s applicable to ‘streaming’ at this stage, just another storage location in the ‘cloud’, which would be quite boring.  Although thinking of it now, aren’t all the put / send cloud solutions potential data warehouses using ETL and the APIs discussed and published above?  Also, it’s ironic that Google would also be competing with itself, if it was a file share, ‘stream’ videos, and YouTube?