One of the main uses of Encanvas and other enterprise mashup platforms is in custom software development.
Traditionally, business software applications have been purchased as shrink-wrapped products that serve a specific process or functional business area. The fundamental problem of this approach is there are so many processes in a business. Attempting to purchase a shrink-wrapped solution for every one of them is hugely expensive. Another problem is there's no guarantee that each of the shrink-wrapped packages is architected to use the same building block components of technology - so organizations have to contend with supporting a variety of different database engines, workflow engines and reporting tools (that all work differently).
The alternative to buying read-made software solutions of course is to build your own. The problem in doing this is the high cost and risk of project failure. Developing bespoke software applications has traditionally been performed by programmers and IT professionals in back-rooms working on a common plan that's been drafted as the 'best guess' of what the outcome should look like. Programmers find themselves working in parallel on different parts of the same system. No surprise, when the project team tries to bring all of these development strands together and present it to the users and stakeholders, it's not uncommon for lots of re-working to be needed. Primarily for this reason, organizations make do with buying shrink-wrapped software and coping with the high expense of operating a plethora of different software applications that still don't really fit their business need or how they want to work.
Encanvas, and other composite applications design products, overcome these issues by providing IT leaders with a common toolkit of ready-to-use technology components so they can develop applications across the enterprise as the need arises. What makes Encanvas particularly unique is that it doesn't require coding or scripting skills. Its design environment is completely 'point-and-click'. Even its data integration and mashup features and logic building features are created using drag and drop methods. Another feature is that unlike other Enterprise Mashup products, Encanvas is supplied with ready-made design elements for mapping, forms capture, social networking, reporting, file transfer, dashboards etc. - so there's no need to rely on third party components. This is important for developers because they can see developoment projects all the way through to delivery of a robust and scalable system in the knowledge they have full control over design components and can modify every aspect of the user interface design and application functionality.
By removing the time and complexity of coding in development, Encanvas reduces project risk by enabling business analysts to develop their applications in real-time with stakeholders in workshop environments. With everyone on the same page, it's possible to architect right-first-time deployable solutions.
Time to value on Encanvas is greatly reduced by it use of existing data resources (with its ability to mashup data from existing IT systems) and its ready-made building blocks for complex technology components like geo-spatial mapping. It means that IT leaders can embed IT-centric business analysts into process improvement teams and provide these individuals with a single design, deployment and operational environment with the dexterity to cope with all of their enterprise information management challenges.
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