The global document workflow management software market is a big and growing business, reaching $8.52 billion in 2021 and estimated to grow to $55.35 billion in 2028, according to Grandview Research.
One company, airSlate, disrupted the category by focusing on the needs of individual users at small and mid-sized businesses and using the scientific method to constantly test and learn its way to product development, customer satisfaction and market share growth.
Headquartered in Boston, airSlate began life as PDFFiller in 2008, a company founded by Vadim Yasinovsky, who developed a way to create editable forms and documents from PDF files. That company struggled to grow until Yasinovsky’s friend Borya Shakhnovich became CEO and broadened the company into document workflow and digital transformation that turned the company into a fast-growth software business. This founder’s journey story is based on my interview with Shakhnovich.
airSlate Co-Founder and CEO Borya Shakhnovich.
Prior to airSlate, Shakhnovich was the founder of Orwik, a community network for scientists and institutions, and Yasinovsky was one of his investors. “I came to one of my investors who was running PDFFiller at the time. And I said, ‘Look, I have this marketing technology, why don’t you apply it To PDFFiller?’ And he said, ‘I don’t know anything about how to apply this marketing technology, why don’t you come and build it with me.’ And that’s how airSlate was really born,” says Shakhnovich.
At that time, PDFFiller was a small company with $400,000 in annual revenue. Using Shakhnovich’s technology and business savvy, the team bootstrapped PDFFiller to grow to reach 160,000 customers, 160 employees and $60 million annual revenue. After several years, Shakhnovich moved into the CEO role and the company greatly expanded its product offering and formally became airSlate in 2018.
Today the company positions itself as a global SaaS technology company that provides no-code business process automation and document management solutions to companies of all sizes. Its PDF editing, e-signature workflow, and business process automation solutions allow users to solve document workflow challenges more easily and at lower cost than other enterprise software providers, according to Shakhnovich.
The company continues to experience significant growth, increasing revenue 50% year over year, expanding its customer base and including partner collaborations with Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), Microsoft, Samsung, SoftwareOne, Xerox and others. “Right now, we have over one million customers and about 1,000 employees,” says Shakhnovich.
As a result, the company has raised a total of $181.5 million in venture funding to date. Its most recent $51.5 million financing on June 16, 2022 led by G Squared, including a strategic partnership with UiPath, valued airSlate at $1.25 billion. Additional investors include Silicon Valley Bank, Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital, High Sage Ventures, General Catalyst, Horizon Capital and others. “We’ve run this business pretty much cashflow neutral throughout the last 10 years. So all of the money that we raised is either on the balance sheet or used for M&A,” says Shakhnovich.
Before becoming an entrepreneur, Shakhnovich was an evolutionary biologist and approaches business with an evolutionary design model and attributes his success as a leader is to his academic training. “I like interdisciplinary approaches to solving complex problems whether using Physics to understand customer acquisition or using Biology to understand customer retention. Before my life in startups and online marketing, I used to teach bioinformatics at BU and do systems biology research at Harvard,” says Shakhnovich.
Shakhnovich grew up in Russia up until the age of eleven. His family moved to the U.S. in 1990 when his father became a professor of chemistry at Harvard. Shakhnovich followed in his father’s footstep and pursued an academic career. He attended the University of Illinois, in Urbana Champaign. “I studied computational biophysics, so nothing that’s even remotely related to business,” says Shakhnovich. After graduating, he went on to earn his PhD at Boston University in bioinformatics, which is the statistical analysis of biological systems, including genes, proteins and evolution. He then became a professor of Bioinformatics at Boston University in 2004 and soon thereafter moved over to Harvard in 2006 to lead a Systems Biology group there.
In 2008, right before the beginning of the financial crisis, he left Harvard to start his own business. “I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I always wanted to create my own business. And in a lot of ways, being an academic is actually like running your own very small business,” says Shakhnovich.
He founded Orwik a professional network for researchers that was meant to solve the problem of transparency in the academic process, but after four years trying to make it work, the business never took off. “I made all of the mistakes that I think beginning entrepreneurs make. I started building a company for myself instead of for customers and built a product without testing it in the marketplace,” says Shakhnovich. He apparently learned his lesson well with the creation and exponential growth of airSlate.
As for the future? “Over the next five to ten years, we would like to train a million people on using our technology to increase their efficiency and value to their own business. We want to help an employee that was earning $40,000 to $50,000 and turn them into an employee that is critical to the business, earning $100,000 to $120,000. And that’s the mission of the company overall,” concludes Shakhnovich.

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Shares of Flywire Co. (NASDAQ:FLYW – Get Rating) have been assigned a consensus rating of “Buy” from the eight analysts that are covering the stock, Marketbeat Ratings reports. Seven equities research analysts have rated the stock with a buy recommendation and one has given a strong buy recommendation to the company. The average 12-month price target among brokerages that have updated their coverage on the stock in the last year is $31.25.
FLYW has been the topic of a number of research analyst reports. Raymond James reduced their target price on Flywire from $33.00 to $28.00 and set a “strong-buy” rating on the stock in a report on Thursday, November 10th. The Goldman Sachs Group lowered their target price on Flywire from $32.00 to $28.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research report on Wednesday, November 9th. Loop Capital initiated coverage on Flywire in a research report on Monday, October 24th. They issued a “buy” rating and a $25.00 target price on the stock. Stephens lowered their target price on Flywire from $30.00 to $26.00 and set an “overweight” rating on the stock in a research report on Wednesday, November 9th. Finally, Wells Fargo & Company lowered their price target on Flywire from $30.00 to $27.00 and set an “overweight” rating on the stock in a research report on Wednesday, November 9th.

Insider Transactions at Flywire

In other news, major shareholder Enrique T. Salem sold 96,136 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, November 21st. The stock was sold at an average price of $20.51, for a total value of $1,971,749.36. Following the sale, the insider now directly owns 11,645,388 shares in the company, valued at approximately $238,846,907.88. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website. In related news, major shareholder Enrique T. Salem sold 96,136 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Monday, November 21st. The stock was sold at an average price of $20.51, for a total transaction of $1,971,749.36. Following the sale, the insider now owns 11,645,388 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $238,846,907.88. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through this link. Also, Director Jo Natauri sold 147,816 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, December 12th. The shares were sold at an average price of $22.20, for a total value of $3,281,515.20. Following the completion of the transaction, the director now owns 1,070,982 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $23,775,800.40. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Over the last ninety days, insiders have sold 1,827,792 shares of company stock worth $39,175,372. Company insiders own 37.50% of the company’s stock.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Flywire

A number of institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in FLYW. Vanguard Group Inc. lifted its stake in Flywire by 29.0% in the 3rd quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 7,281,361 shares of the company’s stock worth $167,179,000 after purchasing an additional 1,635,222 shares in the last quarter. Alliancebernstein L.P. boosted its stake in shares of Flywire by 127.3% during the 3rd quarter. Alliancebernstein L.P. now owns 5,221,323 shares of the company’s stock valued at $119,882,000 after purchasing an additional 2,924,057 shares in the last quarter. BlackRock Inc. lifted its position in Flywire by 20.4% during the 3rd quarter. BlackRock Inc. now owns 3,680,820 shares of the company’s stock valued at $84,512,000 after acquiring an additional 624,918 shares during the period. Millennium Management LLC raised its holdings in Flywire by 33.3% in the second quarter. Millennium Management LLC now owns 2,308,228 shares of the company’s stock worth $40,694,000 after buying an additional 576,636 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Eventide Asset Management LLC grew its stake in shares of Flywire by 1,254.5% in the third quarter. Eventide Asset Management LLC now owns 1,800,367 shares of the company’s stock worth $41,336,000 after acquiring an additional 1,667,446 shares during the period. 79.06% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

Flywire Stock Performance

Flywire stock opened at $21.74 on Friday. The firm has a market capitalization of $2.35 billion, a P/E ratio of -46.26 and a beta of 1.21. The stock has a fifty day moving average price of $21.16 and a 200 day moving average price of $21.99. Flywire has a 52 week low of $14.56 and a 52 week high of $39.31. The company has a current ratio of 3.44, a quick ratio of 3.44 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.05.
Flywire (NASDAQ:FLYW – Get Rating) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, November 8th. The company reported ($0.04) EPS for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $0.06 by ($0.10). The firm had revenue of $88.90 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $86.94 million. Flywire had a negative return on equity of 10.43% and a negative net margin of 18.85%. Equities research analysts anticipate that Flywire will post -0.47 earnings per share for the current year.

About Flywire

(Get Rating)
Flywire Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, operates as a payment enablement and software company in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, and internationally. Its payment platform and network, and vertical-specific software help clients to get paid and help their customers to pay.

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When it comes to digital files, PDF is the one format to rule them all. It’s the one format that lets you exchange formatted documents with anyone, anywhere, using any operating system. Adobe invented the portable document format in 1993, and in its many versions, Adobe Acrobat is the one app that towers over all others that view and manage PDFs, even if other apps are better in some aspects. This review focuses on Acrobat Pro, the highest-end of Acrobat’s many versions, but even the minimalist free version, Adobe Acrobat Reader, is worth having if you don’t want or need the full versions.
Acrobat isn’t cheap. Acrobat Pro costs $19.99 per month with a one-year commitment, or a much less costly $239.88 per year if paid for the year upfront. If you pay month to month with no commitment, it’s $29.99 per month. Pro runs on Windows and macOS.
A lower-featured Acrobat Standard, for Windows only, costs $12.99 per month with a one-year commitment, or $155.88 if you pay for the full year upfront. It’s $22.99 per month if you pay monthly with no commitment. If you choose Standard, you don’t get document comparison, redaction, or built-in OCR that converts scanned PDFs to editable documents. 
As a software reviewer, I get a lot of free review copies of many apps, but Acrobat Pro is one of the few apps I happily pay for every year. If you don’t like subscriptions, older, lower-featured permanent-license (one-time payment) versions are available: Acrobat Pro 2020 costs $538.80, and Acrobat Standard 2020 costs $358.80. 
The free Adobe Acrobat Reader version is available for Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android. It lets you add comments to PDFs as the full-priced versions do. You can use two desktop or laptop copies of Acrobat with your account; it doesn’t matter if the two copies are on the same OS platform or different ones. If you start up Acrobat on a third machine, you’ll be prompted to log out of one of two machines you already use, and you can always go back to the logged-out machine and log in again.
Why should you pay for a PDF app? After all, modern operating systems have built-in PDF viewing and markup software that let you draw arrows and circles or add text-only notes to existing PDFs. Microsoft Edge does this under Windows, and Preview does the job on a Mac. 
A commercial app like Acrobat Pro adds optical character recognition (OCR) to convert scanned documents into searchable PDFs. It also adds redaction features, editing features that let you correct typos and replace images, file-comparison features for finding differences between versions, and PDF-signing features that let you create and process documents for others to sign. Adobe stands out among the competition for its secure Document Cloud service that makes it easy to exchange PDFs via the cloud and lets you perform advanced signing and editing functions on Adobe’s mobile PDF apps.
A subscription-based copy of Acrobat updates itself every two or three months, and the latest release changes the app’s name from Acrobat Pro DC to Acrobat Pro. If you’re a longtime user who never figured out that DC stood for Document Cloud, you’re a member of a popular club. 
Other recent enhancements include onboarding tutorials that appear when you first run the app or any of its tools that you haven’t used before. And, in the unlikely event that you own a Meta Quest or Meta Quest Pro virtual-reality headset and want to manage PDFs in the metaverse instead of on your desktop or laptop, you can now—as of October 2022—install a Meta version of Acrobat to your headset and activate it with an existing Acrobat account or create a new account. I don’t see this as part of my future, but maybe it’s something you’ll want to try. Anything’s possible.
Acrobat takes some getting used to because its interface isn’t like anything else. Other PDF apps tend to have a ribbon-style interface, more or less like Microsoft 365 apps. Acrobat goes its own way with an interface that uses a standard top-line menu for opening and managing files and one or more toolbars for manipulating the content of a PDF document. 
When you’re merely viewing a PDF, Acrobat shows a standard toolbar with icons for viewing and sharing or selecting content. You can extend this toolbar with a customizable set of quick tools that you can choose from any of the app’s many features. A right-hand pane in the main window, which you can open or hide, displays a customizable list of other sets of tools for adding comments, editing, redacting text or images, scanning or OCR features, form creation and form filling, and much more. When you select one of these tool sets, a second toolbar appears below the standard one. The commenting toolbar, for example, lets you add text boxes, lines, arrows, circles and ellipses, and much more.
When you view a PDF, Acrobat lets you split the window horizontally so that one part of the file appears in the top pane and another part appears in the bottom pane. Unlike other PDF apps I’ve seen, Adobe also has a Spreadsheet Split feature that works like the freeze feature in spreadsheet apps that keeps the top row and left column visible while you scroll through the rest. This feature is useful mostly in viewing PDFs made from spreadsheets, but it could also be useful for keeping a map legend visible while you explore the rest of a map. 
Acrobat also offers a Reading view that hides most of the interface, but it doesn’t offer a view that displays only the unformatted text of a PDF, a feature I’ve found only in Foxit PDF Editor Pro. As in other PDF apps, you can drag and drop pages to reorder them and insert pages from other files and formats. For example, you can drag a Word document into the thumbnail images of an existing PDF, and Acrobat will convert the Word document into PDF format and insert it into the existing PDF pages.
Go deep into Acrobat’s interface, and you’ll find an astonishing wealth of features. The Comments toolset lets you write or draw almost anything on a file, and you can omit the comments when you export the file. From the Forms tools, you can create a fillable PDF form either by modifying an existing Word document or a PDF or by creating a form from scratch and adding text and fill-in fields from a toolbar. Advanced users and IT departments can apply JavaScript actions to form fields. The Forms tool set also lets you mail out the form and collect responses via email or set up a tracking system that sends out multiple PDF copies and gathers comments and markup into your original copy. 
Its interface has some inconsistencies because Acrobat has grown enormously over the years. For example, when you start with the Forms tool set, you can create a form from scratch, but when you access the same feature from the topline menu, the option to create a form from scratch is grayed out. No one seems to know why. 
Acrobat also allows you to create a web-based form on Adobe’s server, with a link that lets you add the form as a live page on your own website. You launch the form-creating process in Acrobat, but you create the form in a web browser using an Acrobat-like interface to upload an existing PDF or Microsoft 365 file. Then you add form fields and set up methods of sharing or tracking the form. Like all other advanced PDF apps, Acrobat offers full management features for creating and using digital signatures. 
Graphic designers seem to prefer Acrobat to all other PDF software for its uniquely powerful Preflight features that prepare files for professional printing and online display. Acrobat offers a long list of prebuilt operations for converting fonts and colors for specific print jobs, plus a troubleshooter that analyzes a PDF and suggests changes. I’m not a graphics professional, but I’ve used Acrobat’s Preflight features to fine-tune scanned PDFs to reduce file size without losing visual detail.
One major feature in commercial PDF apps is their ability to use OCR to convert a scanned PDF into a searchable PDF and export it to a standard editable format like Microsoft Word or Excel. If you need this feature, you should experiment with the free trials of all major PDF apps because there’s no way to predict which one will work best with the kinds of documents that you use. Over the years, I consistently get the best results from Editors’ Choice winner ABBYY FineReader Pro with its brilliantly powerful and efficient OCR editor that lets you correct OCR errors at top speed. 
Acrobat’s OCR software is very effective but doesn’t match FineReader’s in accuracy or efficiency, and its proofreading menu requires too many clicks for anyone to use it with a long document. Foxit PDF Editor Pro uses a licensed version of the technology in an older version of FineReader with a more awkward interface than the one in the current FineReader version. 
Another high-end PDF app, Kofax Power PDF Advanced, uses a licensed version of OmniPage’s OCR technology, less accurate than Acrobat’s or FineReader’s, and with a clumsy interface. And another PDF app, Nitro Pro, integrates technology from I.R.I.S., which, in my testing, ranks below FineReader, Acrobat, and OmniPage in power and convenience.
If you want to export a scanned PDF to a standard editable format, FineReader is by far the best choice because of its many options to export with different levels of formatting so that you’re more likely to get a document that isn’t cluttered with random marks from a scanned image. If you have a PDF that wasn’t scanned but was created directly from a word processor or spreadsheet, then any PDF app will do a serviceable job of exporting back to an Office format. But again, you should experiment with the documents that you normally use. One feature to keep in mind: Kofax Power PDF 5 Advanced and FineReader Pro both have a Watched Folder feature that automatically converts documents placed in that folder to PDFs.
For all its wealth of features, Acrobat sometimes surprises me by lacking a feature that one or more other apps include. For example, Acrobat has no whiteout tool for removing text or stray marks. Foxit PDF Editor Pro and Nitro PDF Pro both have one. In Acrobat and any other advanced PDF app, you can use the powerful redaction tool to remove text or graphics, but it requires more steps than seems necessary to simply remove some text. When you scan a book, your scanned images might contain two facing pages. ABBYY FineReader automatically splits those images in two, one for each page. Annoyingly, Acrobat doesn’t, although some users report success with a Page Splitter add-in from KHKonsulting that I haven’t tried.
Acrobat isn’t cheap, and you should consider alternatives before committing yourself to it.
The most impressive alternative I’ve found is Foxit PDF Editor Pro, priced at $149 per year for a license that works on either Windows or macOS. A Foxit license is good for only one computer, however, not two as in Acrobat. The Foxit app integrates with Microsoft’s Azure Information Protection system and the iManage and eDocs digital management systems. It also has a text-only view option that I haven’t seen elsewhere. For me, the worst feature of Foxit’s app is its fuchsia-purple interface which can’t be changed to a less annoying color. 
Kofax Power PDF 5 Advanced is priced attractively at $179 for a permanent license, no subscription needed. It includes a Watched Folder feature, and the many law offices that still use WordPerfect will value its option to export to WordPerfect. Like Acrobat, it lets you apply page numbering to thumbnail images so that the thumbnail numbering matches the numbers on the actual pages. Kofax’s advanced version is Windows-only, but you can choose a reduced Mac version called Power PDF 4.2 Standard for Mac ($129).
Nitro PDF Pro is also a one-time purchase, $179.99 for Windows or Mac, which you have to buy separately. It’s slightly less feature-packed than other apps, with less effective OCR, but with an Office-like interface that’s easy to navigate. Because PDF is an open format, you can find many other apps at various price ranges that may be worth trying.
I said at the start that it’s hard to find an app that can create a PDF from a web page without inserting page breaks. In fact, I’ve only found one, and it exists only on the Mac. It’s called Paparazzi! (with the exclamation mark), and it’s freeware, with donations accepted. If you know of a Windows equivalent, please let me know.
What about free online PDF editing? Dozens of free cloud-based PDF services are out there, but I’m reluctant to trust them with my data. I use Adobe’s online services because Adobe is well-established and has enough high-powered clients to let me trust its security. But I really don’t want to start sending my files to an online site named something like FlyByNightPDF when I don’t know whether it’s based in a dictatorship where the government makes a copy of every file I send and I have no trust that the PDF I upload won’t come back to me with hidden malware or spyware. When a site offers free PDF processing, it’s worth asking what the site might be getting in return.
Adobe Acrobat Pro is our Editors’ Choice winner for PDF software thanks to its enormous power and deep feature set, despite the absence of a few convenience features like page-splitting and whiteout. If you already own our Editors’ Choice winner in the OCR app category, ABBYY FineReader Pro, then it can double as a PDF app, though without the full feature set in Acrobat. Otherwise, you can’t go wrong with Adobe Acrobat Pro.
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Static testing is a software testing method that examines a program — along with any associated documents — but does not require the program to be executed. Dynamic testing, the other main category of software testing, requires testers to interact with the program while it runs. The two methods are frequently used together to ensure the basic functionalities of a program.
Instead of executing the code, static testing is a process of checking the code and designing documents and requirements before it’s run to find errors. The main goal is to find flaws in the early stages of development because it is normally easier to find the sources of possible failures this way.
It’s common for code, design documents and requirements to be static tested before the software is run to find errors. Anything that relates to functional requirements can also be checked. More specifically, the process will involve reviewing written materials that provide a wider view of the tested software application as a whole. Some examples of what’s tested include the following:
Some benefits of static testing include the following:
Static testing is carried out with two different steps or techniques — review and static analysis. Static review is typically carried out to find and remove errors and ambiguities found in supporting documents. Documents reviewed include software requirements specifications, design and test cases. The documents can be reviewed in multiple ways, such as in a walkthrough, peer review or inspection.
The next step, static analysis, is where the code is analyzed. The evaluation is done to find any structural defects that could lead to errors when the program runs.
Some other techniques used while performing static testing include use case requirements validation, functional requirements validation, architecture review and field dictionary validation.
Use case requirements ensure possible end-user actions are properly defined. Functional requirements will identify any necessary requirements for the software. Review of architecture analyzes the business-level processes. Field dictionary validation will analyze user interface fields.
Static testing can also be conducted manually or automated with various tools.
The first step in static testing is reviews. They can be conducted in numerous ways and look to find and remove errors found in supporting documents. This process can be carried out in four different ways:
Dynamic testing assesses the feasibility of a software program by giving input and examining output.
The biggest difference between static and dynamic testing is that the code must compile and run in dynamic testing. Static testing can be performed without the application running. Functional behavior and performance are checked to confirm if the code works properly.
Static testing will analyze the code, requirements documents and design documents, while dynamic testing will look at the functional behavior of software systems such as memory usage and performance.
Static testing essentially gives an assessment of code, while dynamic testing will try to find active bugs. From a time and cost perspective, dynamic testing is often more expensive than static testing.
The two types of testing are not meant to be mutually exclusive, however. Ideally, they should be used together. Static testing is about the prevention of defects, whereas dynamic testing is about finding active defects.
Types of dynamic testing include unit testing, integration testing, system testing and performance testing.
Static testing tools can be used to automate the static testing process. Some examples include the following:
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25 October 2018, Berlin: An employee shows the new mobile POS system at the Deutsche Bahn … [+] presentation of new products and services. Photo: Britta Pedersen/dpa-Zentralbild/dpa (Photo by Britta Pedersen/picture alliance via Getty Images)
Software applications go both ways. Horizontal software applications are those apps that could apply to a wide variety of use cases across any industry and work in the hands of almost any user – think about Word, Excel, the core functions of most databases as well as a whole selection of apps a user might find on their smartphone such as WhatsApp, Twitter, Google Maps and so on.
These are horizontal apps, they’re multi-use-case and multi-applicable, if not quite perfectly multi-purpose in the widest possible sense.
Then there are vertical applications.
A vertical application could be (to conjure up some extreme and less radical examples), a retail cash register software solution specifically built for the needs of golf professional shops, with unique Point of Sale (PoS) functions for shop merchanise, golf course booking slot options and player equipment repair management functions.
Equally and perhaps more broadly, a vertical application could be a Field Service Management (FSM) application designed to look after engineers’ interests when on gas maintenance visits, building inspections or some form of repair job. Often still custom-coded to the use case in hand depending upon its level of adaptability, vertical application software suite and platform providers strive to build as much customizability into their tools as possible so that they can apply to as broad a range of deployments as possible.
Why the fuss and focus on vertical apps?
Because we’re at that watershed-tipping-inflexion point where the enterprise software industry has produced a weight of product that now enables us to start looking after more specialized use cases. In truth, the golf shop app example stems from a real world app that stretches back to the 1990s, but there are now enough tiers of automation and data analytics intelligence for us to start thinking about this more directly.
Indeed, as Kaitki Agarwal of A5G Networks, Inc. has already noted here this year in a Forbes Technology Council Expert Panel story, “Industries are transforming and technologies are converging. In the past, platform developers or application developers did not necessarily need insight into other technologies such as Machine Learning (ML), 4G, 5G functions and so on. In today’s world, it will become important for developers to be ‘T-shaped’ – that is, to have deep vertical knowledge as well as horizontal knowledge and expertise.”
This notion of T-shaped development is perhaps meant to convey a broad base upper layer of knowledge i.e. competency with operating systems, popular programming languages, widely used development environments and established software delivery methodologies such as the Agile (CAPS A deliberate) approach. But, crucially, it will also incorporate a long tail stem (the vertical part of the T) where a developer’s knowledge extends downwards into an industry or use case specialism… and this is why we sometimes now use the term ‘domain experts’ i.e. people that know the nuances of the coalface.
The complexity of modern software development makes the concept of a full-stack developer nonsensical suggests Joe Drumgoole, senior director of developer relations at cross-platform document-oriented database company MongoDB. He points us to the fact that in 2003 Eric Evans wrote “Domain Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software”.
“Even then [in 2003], Evans put domain knowledge and ‘bounded contexts’ at the center of software design.. A bounded context establishes a domain that a single team can work on independently of others. The contextual firewall is then the Application Programming Interface (API) or the contract between the technology service consumer and the originator,” explained Drumgoole.
He further notes that this was an extension of ‘design by contract first established by Bertrand Meyers in the 1990s. The point is that complexity has always been a problem and the solution is never ‘programmers must just get better’ somehow. Instead, we have developed better and higher-level abstractions.
“Hence single node databases begat distributed databases, TCP/IP begat HTTP, and RPC begat REST,” said MongoDB’s Drumgoole.
Getting software application developers to understand the business and the market need is key to success in any successful company. This means that developers can work in cross-functional teams alongside Line of Business (LoB) team members and speak the same language around problems, rather than simply looking at the technology involved.
In Cassandra-centric database company DataStax’s ‘State of the Data Race’ report this year, as many as 91 percent of respondents from organizations with a strategic focus on deploying enterprise software applications that use data in real-time said that developers, business owners and data scientists are working in cross-functional teams – hence the potential for greater development of vertical applications.
“Companies win by empowering teams closest to the customer experience or business process to roll up their sleeves, dig in and make a difference in a quick, Agile fashion. That includes understanding the minutiae of the industry and how its processes work in practice. Shared curiosity and drive are critical for every role, including developers,” said Bryan Kirschner, vice president strategy at DataStax.
It seems clear, any organization is going to have distinctive relationships with its customers and business processes that are broken down in their own special ways. Delays and disconnects happen when business owners who don’t fully understand technology try to communicate with developers… who, in turn, don’t fully understand the pain points or the upside opportunity.
“The notion of a ‘vertical’ application might be a slightly odd notion in some senses – I mean, all applications are used in a vertical setting, essentially,” said Marne Martin, IFS’s president of service Management, EAM, and Global Industries. “What I would say is that you can come at the enterprise software market from a best-of-suite solution perspective (i.e. an end-to-end suite of applications where integration is inherent), or a best-of-breed solution (where functionality is more specialized, but some level of integration to other systems will be needed). Companies need to evaluate their current landscape together with their business goals and ambitions – and then recognize the pros and cons in their decision in terms of speed of roll-out, impact on customer service, operational efficiencies… and so on.”
Given the discussion thus far then, does the scenario (or perhaps spectre) of Line of Business domain-specific software application development mean programmers and other software engineers working in a dedicated stream will pigeon-hole themselves into a role they can’t transfer out of?
“This is not a concern that the software industry should have – and vertical specialism is happening at every level from the way the cloud hyperscalers [AWS, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure] are bringing new services to market… and the way we as technology platform makers are honing and aligning services today,” said an upbeat Prakash Vyas, head of portfolio at OutSystems, a company known for its low-code and application modernization approach.
For Vyas, it’s more a question best of breed technologies developing at a more cerebral higher level and of developers embracing those innovations with a view to gaining competency and skills, but retaining what he calls a ‘transferability of experience’ across use cases, even when working in narrower industry vertical scenarios.
“Many industries share commonalities or system characteristics that other companies are in fact trying to learn from others that they see as leading the way. For example, if you’ve supported a high-touch sales organization in financial services you may be well set up to do the same in healthcare, because organisations in that sector have similar relationships with patients. So vertical software development is not a closed shop – the message to developers should be: excel at what you do, strive for more, apply it to the requirements in hand, think about how you might also be able to help others,” summarized OutSystems’s Prakash.
Despite our (hopefully) creative use of a television-themed title for this piece (and yes, we realize that nobody younger than Generation-X will know what a TV horizontal hold knob was, or possibly still is, we can now perhaps think about technology growth in more than one plane.
The technology industry likes, no loves, no… adores talking about scale; it’s a means of validating expansion, augmentation and enhancement to guarantee the future worth of tech in general. But rather than just thinking about scale for upward growth, we can now think about vertical scale for the number of users and size of data estate in a horizontally expanding fashion.
Vertical software is real, please do not adjust your set.

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An intranet is a private network of endpoints, servers, content, and frontend UI for productive employee experiences.

An intranet is defined as a network of endpoint devices and servers with a content engine and frontend systems that allow users to access company information in one place, talk to each other, collaborate on files, and enjoy a social media-like experience – operating within a private, secure perimeter. This article provides an overview of the intranet. It explains what an intranet is, how it works, and how it is accessed. It also discusses the critical components of an intranet system.
An intranet is a network of endpoint devices and servers with a content engine and frontend systems that allow users to access company information in one place, talk to each other, collaborate on files, and enjoy a social media-like experience – operating within a private, secure perimeter. 

An Example of a Desktop Intranet Built Using Microsoft SharePoint | Source
The intranet is a restricted network used to securely communicate corporate information and computer resources among workers inside an organization. It improves communication inside a business and facilitates team member access to vital information, connections, applications, forms, and corporate record databases. A database containing the usernames of all workers with network access privileges is frequently employed to manage intranet security.
Intranet software emerged alongside the web in the 1990s, with the primary distinction being that intranets are private (and hence safe), while the net is an open, accessible network.
Owing to the security it provides, an intranet is used chiefly for information interchange, updates, data storage, and workflow management. Users may also be aware of an extranet, which is an intranet that is available to anyone outside the company, such as your clients or business partners.
Intranet security and functioning require a web server that controls requests for data stored on the server. The web server finds and delivers specified files to the appropriate user. Additionally, One must create a content management system to oversee intranet content creation, publication, and upkeep.
In addition to local area networks (LANs) and lease lines linked to wide area network resources, an intranet may also comprise many connected LANs. The intranet web server utilizes transmission control protocol (TCP/IP), HTTP, and additional internet protocols. An intranet often connects to the web and other resources outside the organization through one or more gateway computers.
To access the workplace intranet, employees must have an individual network password and be connected to the business’s local area network (LAN). Using only a virtual private network (VPN) or another secure connection, remote workers access the intranet. The VPN enables users who aren’t linked to the required LAN to access the intranet and receive the same services and data as users who are registered on the LAN.
Intranets are also made available via hosted software packages. Instead of a private server, a company obtains intranet software that performs the same functions as conventional intranets. Some modern intranets link to various corporate applications akin to social networking services.
See More: What Is FPGA (Field-Programmable Gate Array)? Meaning, Working, and Uses
To develop an intranet system (rather than choosing a hosted solution), a business would require the following components:
The intranet software’s primary aim is to link workers throughout the organization. For enterprises adopting remote and flexible work, this involves working with team members on work-related tasks, providing easy accessibility to team documentation and workspaces, and ensuring that all team members are always linked to vital business information. Intranets are virtual workplaces where workers congregate, collaborate on projects, provide feedback on new initiatives, store objectives, and communicate across the organization.
See More: Wifi 5 vs. Wifi 6: Understanding the 10 Key Differences
The primary characteristics you need in an enterprise-grade intranet are:
The critical aspect of an intranet is the centralized storage of an organization’s vital data. Employees need to be able to locate the information they want without becoming lost in a labyrinth of hyperlinks. Intranet search engines must be robust and capable of indexing all intranet material. In search, organizations should increasingly seek to use metadata and artificial intelligence (AI).
Modern intranets are designed for worker mobility. Many workers want flexibility in their jobs, and the vast majority require a secure network wherever they are. A cloud-based intranet enables employees to work from anywhere and provides them access to necessary tools and widgets, whether at the office or on the move.
The bulk of company documentation resides digitally nowadays on a server, a hard drive, or an email inbox. An intranet may centralize them, making them readily discoverable and available to end users. With a centralized repository, you can be confident that everybody has the most up-to-date version. And you may cease filling the inboxes of others. In addition, the intranet should facilitate the organization of your content into distinct libraries.
Communication hubs promote the sharing, socialization, and collaboration of workers. Whether you need to send out content organization-wide, share the newest user interface concepts with a small group, or want a location to discuss the upcoming social event, hubs enable workers to engage rapidly and target the appropriate individuals. Additionally, users need to be able to broadcast instant messages to a single recipient or an entire group.
When appropriately utilized, org charts may be instructive and foster cooperation and innovation. The intranet must give workers an easily accessible organizational chart that presents competencies, resources, and contact details in a simple manner. Users must be able to search by individual, department, geographic area, and talent. Administrators should maintain authority over the material displayed to particular workers. One may accomplish this by establishing a hierarchy.
It is unavoidable that any intranet will necessitate regular maintenance and updates to guarantee that the material offered is correct and valuable. Adding a picture or modifying material shouldn’t be complicated or time-consuming. Surprisingly, many systems need the assistance of technically competent individuals to perform these duties. But the intranet should ideally have a simple edit function to make changes and updates.
Most companies utilize an intranet to provide internal information, such as news articles. The intranet should include content creation tools as user-friendly as top content management systems. Key features must include text editing, picture uploading, audience, launch date selection, social sharing, commenting, and “like” capabilities.
The mobile-centric culture of today has simplified intranet accessibility for workers. Responsive design implementation offers quick intranet accessibility on smartphones and other mobile devices, culminating in an excellent user experience. With such a mobile intranet, workers can check in from anywhere, allowing quicker responses. It provides workers with a more comfortable method to communicate and consume information.
Effective file management may not seem as exciting as other features, but it is essential for workers. It simplifies administrative tasks, such as locating paperwork and important information. Outdated documents are frequently one of the significant difficulties with intranets. Ensure that your file management functionality enables you to allocate ownership rights to specific users to prevent this.
See More: GSM vs. CDMA: Understanding the 10 Key Differences
Intranet homepages serve a crucial function since they are often the entry point to intranet material and, occasionally, the digital workplace as a whole. To maintain traction, a homepage must thus aggregate messages, provide connections and navigation to the information and systems workers need, and be compelling and aesthetically pleasing.
Some duties, despite being commonplace, slow employees down. Consequently, you should seek out a business intranet site that can streamline — and automate —  many of these monotonous tasks. Things such as documentation approval, task creation, and duty assignment may not require much time individually, but they can accumulate over time. The greater the degree to which you can automate workflows, the more effort your users can devote to other crucial aspects of their tasks.
One must be able to tailor your intranet to the brand and requirements of your company. There may also be organizational variations from one department area to the next. Intranet technology may also be capable of learning from its consumers and allowing them to design the sites they want. This is due to features such as personalized accounts, labels for projects and abilities, authored or liked material, etc.
A non-integrated network becomes isolating and challenging to utilize. An intranet connected with other apps, like Google Workspace, SharePoint, and Teams, may provide users with a variety of information and capabilities. Complete integration with existing business suites facilitates access and fosters a unified work environment. One should also search for third-party connections through application programming interfaces (APIS), such as HR planning, communications, survey tools, etc., that enrich your organization.
Businesses store critical and confidential information on their internal communication platforms that they must safeguard against hackers, malware, data breaches, and hostile assaults. Additionally, organizations seeking a more secure internal network may consider migrating to cloud-based systems, which offer additional protection of cloud security.
On unique intranet sites and pages, one may structure company strategy, regulations, service contracts, HR data, and anything else. Distributing information in this manner may break down departmental silos and provide everyone with a central location from which to access resources. Company pages must be adaptable and user-friendly and permit workers to receive updates.
On an intranet, a learning center is an excellent approach to facilitating team member education. It offers workers a single area to acquire training content, guides, and other resources. HR may also utilize your intranet for new employee orientation, including the safe exchange of corporate information before a team member’s official start date.
Organizations on a global scale require solutions that can service them in different locations. A multilingual intranet guarantees that all workers, regardless of their native language, get access to the same data and capabilities. Users can use built-in translation tools to localize material or professional translators for more precise translations.
Blogs are the cornerstone of team member participation in your intranet initiative. They allow the team member to share views, opinions, anecdotes, and recommendations, and they also help colleagues better understand one another. Although top-down data is crucial to internal communications, an intranet that offers employees a voice is what fosters team member participation. This platform’s democratization reveals itself through forums, social commentary, and, most notably, blogging.
See More: Modem vs. Router: Understanding the Key Differences
To maximize the investment in intranet software (whether self-owned or hosted), it is essential to adhere to the following best practices:
The intranet should be where both formal and informal private communications are posted and discussed. The first stage is discouraging and eliminating alternative internal communication channels, such as newsletters, lengthy email threads, obsolete chat applications, etc. Otherwise, your employees will be inundated with irrelevant content to them or their teams, and they will cease frequently monitoring the intranet.
Early intranets mainly consisted of lists of links. In the modern day, however, intranets have expanded to incorporate file management and corporate newsletters. The most effective intranets are designed with a recognizable social experience to accommodate an ever-younger workforce.
An intranet SWOT assessment helps determine what your network must do. This is a lengthy procedure, but the initial step is to record as much information as possible about the communication platforms your staff is now using. If you currently have an intranet, examine its statistics to see how your workers utilize it and what features should be enhanced.
The messages posted on your intranet cannot consist only of HR-written corporate news. To keep your users interested and active on the platform, you must push postings that speak to their interests and acknowledge their contributions to the organization. You will continue to broadcast vital developments, but the news feed should focus on the individuals who make your organization what it is.
Intranets assist various organizational processes, such as HR self-service, information management, internal comms, leadership comms, and collaboration. Due to the intranet’s extensive usage and influence throughout the company, businesses need sustained participation from various stakeholders, including HR, IT, internal communications, senior leadership, and others. Typically, organizations should represent this engagement in continuous governance.
Typically, businesses gather statistics on adoption and use, reach, engagement, user happiness, search outcomes, the individual success of various content types, and more. However, measuring is most effective if there is a consistent approach to continuous development. When measuring, ensure you examine and comprehend what the results imply, make modifications or adjustments, remeasure to determine the effect, and then make more modifications.
See More: What Is Network Topology? Definition, Types With Diagrams, and Selection Best Practices for 2022
In recent years, the usefulness of the intranet has come under question. As companies shift to employee experience platforms, is a purpose-built intranet necessary? The answer is YES. It provides a highly customizable and secure space for collaboration, engagement, and productivity, which also serves to strengthen company culture. That is why research firm Technavio estimates that the intranet software market will grow by over $15 billion by 2026, aided by the rise of cloud computing. 
Did this article fully explain what an intranet is, and what it does? Tell us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. We’d love to hear from you!  

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MongoDB announces columnstore indexing for its document database  The Register
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A content services platform is cloud-based SaaS software that enables users to create, share, collaborate on and store text, audio and video content. Content services platform (CSP), not to be confused with cloud service provider, is a relatively new term that is gaining acceptance as a successor to enterprise content management (ECM) software.
Several prominent vendors — notably Box, Hyland and Nuxeo — use the term, or variants such as content services to describe their software.
Also, tech analyst firm Gartner formally declared in 2017 that it would henceforth use CSP instead of ECM to identify vendors and their services in what Gartner described as a fast-growing market.
One way of explaining the evolution to content services platforms from ECM systems is that the newer concept of delivering content services reflects a shift from self-contained systems and repositories to open services, according to Gartner.
A content services platform expands the range of what an ECM has traditionally done from handling documents to managing more diverse forms of data.
In contrast to ECM systems and their main function of storing content in the enterprise, content services platforms are designed for active use of content data by individuals, workgroups and teams across the extended enterprise. In addition to internal employees, partners, contractors and others can interact with the enterprise through a CSP.
Security capabilities of a content services platform can easily extend to external third parties.
CSPs also are defined by their emphasis on services and microservices and can be installed either as a product suite or as separate applications with common APIs and repositories.
Also, CSPs serve a variety of parties, including users, systems and applications.
Common capabilities include the following:
Many of the vendors with products in the CSP category have simply expanded their ECM products and spun them into service-oriented architecture platforms with integrated content-related services and microservices, content repositories and tools.
Content services platform vendors include OpenText, Microsoft, IBM, M-Files, Oracle, Alfresco, Laserfiche, Newgen Software, Micro Focus, iManage, Fabasoft and Objective.
Editor’s note: This article was written by Shaun Sutner in 2018. TechTarget editors revised it in 2022 to improve the reader experience.
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