Always up to date software – a look behind the scenes

“Your software, always up to date!” O yeah … another empty promise during the sales process … or maybe not?
Have a look behind the scenes at Boltrics.

Recently, my colleague Jan-Cornell blogged about what they do not tell you about “up to date” software. His blog inspired me to tell you more in detail about what up to date software actually means.

Since the day ERP-software exists, people started talking about ‘start an upgrade project’. Those projects usually consume a lot of time and cost a lot of money. I think you’d rather spend that money on something else. Maybe you even already had an upgrade-project and you’re thinking: NEVER again.

Unfortunately, I think you’re right. Most of the time, upgrades cost a lot of money and time… But the good news is, it doesn’t have to be.

With Boltrics, long upgrade projects belong to the past and you can leave your wallet at home. What we do ask you is to give us an indication when your company can permit a downtime of 4 hours. How is that possible? By making choices. What are the things we do en don’t?

What we do:

We always use the latest Microsoft products:

• Microsoft Dynamics NAV: From the release date, we implement only the latest version and customer updates will start immediately.
• Microsoft SQL Server: We always use the latest SQL version.
• Microsoft Azure: We use Microsofts’ Cloud environment.
• Microsoft PowerBI: This is THE reporting tool of Microsoft.
• Microsoft PowerShell: This is THE automation tool of Microsoft.

We install, update and convert each customer automatically using our standard, because:

• Our implementation team has no worries about the configuration, because it is well-known and proven.
• Our support team knows the configuration of our customers and do not waste time on analyzing the system and configuration. So, our support employees can focus 100% on the support request.
• Our upgrade team knows what it is necessary for the next update.

We develop according the Scrum methodology:

• Every night, all codes are compiled automatically and new releases are created (Day Release).
• Every week, all our implementation customers receive the latest release (Week Release).
  This week release contains all solved issues from and new optimizations of the past week.
• Every year, all customers receive the Year Release containing all solved problems and optimizations of the past year.

Plug-and-Play functionality:

• Several customers have specific reports or additional functionalities which we can activate without touching our standard.
• This means that we can easily upgrade the customer, because the customer-specific modifications will not be affected by our upgrades.

 

What we don’t:

Documenting: We think the new code is better than before, and it will be modified again and again to improve. The code is the documentation for the programmer. Therefore, we think that documenting is a waste of time.

Customization and Components: We focus on the standard Microsoft tools and techniques. And without customization and components we are able to make it possible to do our upgrades cheap, fast and smoothly.

Testing and Acceptance through long OTAP-street over several days: Development, testing and set it live, we do it in one day. That is why we change our code directly in the production environment. These changes should not impact business processes, because, beside this customer, over 60+ other customers are using the same solution. The developer, consultant and the customer are directly involved, making implementing change easy.