| CK Tan |
| Otis Elevator, Australia |
This is CK. He's got tight deadlines and no wiggle room. He needs his
team to be productive. Using Iron Speed Designer, two programmers new
to .NET were building working, custom Web applications in a few hours.
Now they can contribute and learn the language at the same time. They
feel good. Better still, CK and his team deliver.
CK uses Iron Speed Designer.
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| Otis Australasia Business Applications |
Otis Elevator, Australia
Minto, NSW Australia
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CK Tan is the Business Applications Systems Manager at Otis Elevator in Australia and looks after the development of all the local business-related software applications. While not working on Otis' product engineering, CK and his small team of three write and manage all the systems for all the offices in Australia and New Zealand. That's more than 1,300 people relying on CK to provide the database management and software solutions they need to do their jobs most efficiently.
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Reflecting an evolutionary path over the years, CK manages applications running on a myriad of platforms ranging from Natural/Adabas to NT4/APPX to client server to n-tier systems using Visual Basic, ASP and SQL Server. The local team has lots of experience optimizing and expanding applications on these legacy systems. Beginning in 2003, however, when looking to move legacy applications to the Web and the Microsoft .NET Framework, CK found himself facing a tricky migration challenge. Sure, his team was bright and wanted to learn. The problem was that a couple of internal applications were needed quickly, and that doesn't leave much time for training or practice.
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"We were very productive using a 4GL repository-based development tool before we moved to Windows, so I knew the benefits of code generation could be impressive. I checked out several contemporary code generators for .NET and was encouraged to learn that vast improvements have been made in terms of generated code quality, the ability to customize the user interface and to extend generated applications so that multiple apps can be connected. None had the power, speed or flexibility of Iron Speed Designer," CK says.
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"What I didn't expect to find was how easy Iron Speed Designer is to use. That opened my eyes to a whole new transition strategy for my team. Rather than hiring consultants, I could meet my deadlines and keep the learning and expertise in-house.
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"Even if we were all .NET experts, it would still take us three times as long to launch compared to using Iron Speed Designer," he says.
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| The CK Tan Story |
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Born in Malaysia, educated in the U.S. and gaining work experience in Florida, Malaysia and Singapore before moving to Australia, CK has been inventing and building software solutions to make employees in large technology companies more productive for more than a dozen years. He's been an advocate of Web-based applications for some time. Perhaps because the offices he is responsible for have always crossed regional and national borders, CK recognized early on the benefits of using the Web to manage complex systems across large geographic areas.
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"I have always believed in code generation, but there were very few products over the years that I thought generated the entire application well enough to be useful. We need a tool that very quickly can generate the interface and application layer based on complex database schemas. We wanted lots of flexibility and the ability to customize every part of the generated application when required," he says. "I'm generating high quality code that we are proud of, and allowing my team to focus on custom coding, not infrastructure."
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| Web Apps in Every-day Roles |
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"We are using Iron Speed Designer for all new Web-based development projects. Our strategy is to migrate to our Intranet some key functions used by large numbers of users now performed in legacy systems over the WAN. Iron Speed Designer is instrumental in our achieving this."
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| What's Next? |
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"Iron Speed Designer helps us launch faster and with added functionality. We're being productive on .NET while maintaining our output level."
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| About the Developer |
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CK Tan is the Business Applications Systems Manager at Otis Elevator in Australia and looks
after the development of all the local business-related software applications. While not working on
Otis' product engineering, CK and his small team of three write and manage all the systems for all the
offices in Australia and New Zealand. He's been an advocate of Web-based applications for some time.
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| Your Turn |
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Got database applications you need developed efficiently, yet still require full customization? Try Iron Speed Designer. Download your free evaluation now.
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Make productivity your goal.
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