mrc's Cup of Joe Blog

Join us in exploring the world of modern development, evolving technologies, and the art of future-proof software

Author name: Joe Stangarone

Joe Stangarone is a 40+ year veteran of the IT industry and president of mrc—the software company behind the award winning development platform, m-Power. Joe shares his leadership and technology insights through the Cup of Joe Blog, focusing primarily on ways businesses can save time, money, and increase productivity using technology.

How to Create Composable Business Applications

developmentComposable applications are business apps that are made of reusable, modular components. They use ‘building blocks’ which can be reused across other applications.

Now, this isn’t a new concept. The idea of modular application development has been around for years. But, why is it so important right now? Why are analyst firms like Gartner pushing the composable concept recently? According to Gartner, it’s so important because “Composability helps you keep up with the accelerating pace of business change.”

They’re absolutely correct. We’re living in a time of rapid change. Agility is more important than ever. A ‘composable’ approach to application development helps businesses adapt to change at lightning speed. It helps your business deliver new applications in hours/days instead of months/weeks.

The next question: How do you create composable applications? Is it difficult to build all of those reusable blocks? Rather than try to explain it to you, we just put together a new video that walks you through the whole process from start to finish. You can watch it below:

Want to learn more? Set up a demo here: Set up a demo.

5 Technologies that CIOs and IT Leaders Can’t Ignore in 2022

trendsSummary: It’s been a challenging past 2 years for many businesses. CIOs and IT leaders were forced to adapt on the fly as the pandemic stretched on. Many receieved a rude awakening–realizing that they didn’t have the technologies in place to adapt. The big question: What technologies will have the biggest impact on the business world in the coming year? In this article, we explore a few more technologies that the modern CIO cannot afford to ignore.

How to modernize a legacy application in 5 minutes

developmentLegacy modernization. It’s such a daunting task. You must take your outdated (but functional) applications and turn them into modern web applications…without disrupting the business at all.

On top of that, many legacy applications have been in use for decades. They’ve likely been maintained and altered by different employees over the years…each with their own way of doing things. The result: Legacy applications are often a jumbled mess of spaghetti code.

Once you look at the challenges of modernization, it’s no wonder why so many organizations put it off.

The good news: There’s an easy way to modernize, using the “extend-and-surround” approach. This modernization method delivers a few huge advantages:

  • It’s fast: You’ll have modern applications faster than you thought possible.
  • It doesn’t touch the legacy applications: There’s no need to alter your existing applications, or even touch them at all. But, it still lets you include custom business logic from your legacy applications if needed.
  • There’s no business disruption: Because you’re not changing your legacy applications, you don’t need to worry about breaking anything or disrupting the business.
  • You can use your existing skills: You don’t need to be a web developer to create modern versions of your legacy applications. You can use the skills you already have in-house.

Want to see this modernization approach in action? We created a video that walks you through the modernization process for a simple legacy application. The best part: You’ll see the whole process in just 5 minutes! You can watch the video here:

Do you want to see a solution like this in your company? Setup an m-Power demo here.

5 big challenges facing CIOs and IT leaders in 2022

automationSummary: Over the past couple of years, CIOs and IT leaders have faced a pop quiz of sorts: How quickly can your company adapt to unexpected challenges? Assuming you navigated through the challenges brought on by the pandemic, the next question is: How will you address the challenges in the coming year? In this article, we explore 5 challenges that CIOs and IT leaders should watch in 2022.

How to integrate cloud data into a dashboard (using web services)

developmentDo you remember back when cloud computing was a new trend? Back then, most businesses ran their software on-premise. Cloud computing was viewed as a security risk and many doubted whether or not it would ever see mass adoption.

Fast forward to the present and cloud computing has most definitely experienced mass adoption. Most businesses these days use multiple cloud services/applications in their day-to-day operations.

In fact, businesses rely so heavily on cloud apps and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) they now face a growing challenge: Their data resides in multiple places. How can they pull data from their disparate cloud apps into a single place for reporting and analytics?

It’s easier than you might think. We just created a video that shows you how quickly you can integrate cloud data (from multiple sources) into a single dashboard using the m-Power Development Platform. In this video, we show you how to:

– pull data out of cloud applications (using web services),
– create web apps and reports over that data,
– and combine those apps and reports into a dashboard.

You can watch the video below:

Do you want to see a solution like this in your company? Setup an m-Power demo here.

Video: How to create a RESTful API in 5 minutes

developmentIn our last article, we explored some big advantages of web APIs. From improving the customer experience to streamlining processes, web services and APIs truly hold plenty of potential.

The big questions: If your business isn’t using web services or APIs right now, where do you start? How do you create them? How long does it take?

We just created a video that answers these questions and goes through the whole process using the m-Power Development Platform. In this video, we walk you through the creation of a RESTful API and even set up a basic web app to consume the data. You might be surprised by how easy it can be. You can watch the video below.

How to create actionable business intelligence (in 10 minutes)

developmentWhat’s the difference between traditional business intelligence and actionable business intelligence? Let’s break down each one:

Traditional BI: Traditional BI and reporting applications deliver data in an easily consumable format. They display key business metrics using charts, graphs, and tables. If done correctly, traditional BI and reporting apps deliver data that decision-makers need to take action.

Actionable BI: Actionable BI takes things a step further. It offers everything that traditional BI offers with one key difference: It lets you take action on your data from within the application. It lets users analyze their data, update data, and trigger workflows. Rather than simply displaying data, actionable business intelligence also lets you do something about it.

If you think about it, this is incredibly useful in all types of situations. Just imagine what you can do with a report or dashboard that also lets you take action on your data and trigger workflows. The possibilities are truly endless.

The big question: How do you create an actionable BI application? Is it more complex than a traditional BI app?

We just created a video that walks you through the whole process using the m-Power Development Platform. You might be surprised by how easy it can be. You can watch the video below.