January 2016 – New Year’s Outlook

Recently, we sent out the following newsletter to those we thought might be interested in what’s happening on the technology front this year. You can use the signup form to the right to add yourself to the newsletter list, we would love to stay in touch! Here is our first newsletter:
The festivities are over, kids are back at school, and you have had your 2016 kickoffs. We are sure you are fired up to attack the challenges of the New Year, and we want to help you get there!
Technology continues to evolve at an ever faster pace. Are you taking advantage of the new opportunities that can help your product or business be more competitive? If you hadn’t noticed, things have changed! Here are a few of the changes we think are the most interesting:

  • The Internet of Things (or IoT) is a fascinating development, where gadgets and devices of all kinds connect to the Internet to deliver and fetch information. Be it appliances, cars or sensors, it is becoming increasingly easy to wire them up to your cloud based services and collect data, provision them, update them, and analyze a vast stream of telematics. With Microsoft Windows 10 IoT Core, you can now use .NET to develop your embedded code with the ease and productivity of modern languages (C#) and tools (Visual Studio). Are you currently, or do you want to be in this space? We can help! Trailhead does IoT core programming.
  • Big Data continues to be a hot topic. It boils down to making sense of all the information received from devices (think IoT, phones, apps, transactions from point of sales systems), and leveraging the scalable cloud fabric to apply vast number crunching resources on a pay-per-use, flexible scale to make sense of what you are collecting and visualize it in an actionable way. Trailhead can help you do this with powerful frameworks like Hadoop and Microsoft HDInsight. Got Big Data? Get Trailhead!
  • Mobility. An ever increasing amount of work is now being performed on mobile devices: phones, tablets, phablets and convertibles. Android and iOS are the prevailing operating systems, but Windows 10 is a strong contender. At Trailhead, we use Xamarin to develop cross platform applications with 60-70% code reuse. We also develop native applications for IOS, Android and Windows/Windows Phone. Ask how you can deploy your application to multiple platforms with minimal rewrites!
  • Responsive Web Design and Single-Page Applications. Frameworks such as Angular allow you to write very powerful HTML web apps that will run on the desktop and seamlessly adapt to a mobile form factor. With more work now happening on tablets and phones, you might want to rethink your desktop or plugin-based technology (read this!) and replace it with a responsive, single-page web app! You can keep the back-end or wrap it in a more mobile-friendly layer. Either way, we can help you make the transition.
  • ASP.NET 5. Have you always loved the rapid development enabled by .NET, C#, and Visual Studio, but needed to create Linux-hosted applications? With the release of ASP.NET 5, and .NET Core, it’s now possible to write C# applications and host them on Mac and Linux natively. With this exciting update, we are finally able to realize the promise of a truly portable and cross-platform  framework and runtime since that was first promised with the initial release of .NET over a decade ago.
  • Cloud. It is becoming increasingly easy to develop and deploy apps as multi-tenant, scalable solutions, using Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web Services. New technologies such as Docker, and Microsoft’s new embrace of Linux (yes, you can create .NET apps and deploy to Linux!), are changing the landscape and the ease with which you can mix and match infrastructure to meet your needs. Stuck in costly on premise solution? Let Trailhead help you move to the cloud!

2016 is already shaping up to an exciting year for Trailhead. Since launching a month ago, we have signed four new clients and tripled the size of our team. We have dedicated web and mobile quality assurance, tools, and processes. We have top notch front-end and full-stack developers. We have native and cross-platform mobile developers. Our great design department also allows us to quickly create interactive, clickable visualizations of mobile and web apps, and to help you understand your needs.
We’d love to apply our team to your most challenging projects, and look forward to working with you to make great things happen in 2016! Don’t hesitate to call us and get going.
John and J.

John Waters

John Waters

As a highly respected and recommended technology leader, entrepreneur, and software architect extraordinaire, John Waters provides guidance for Trailhead teams and projects. His remarkable project requirements gathering and project estimation skills allow him to oversee teams that deliver client projects on time and on budget. John’s background includes over two decades of systems architecting, implementations for a range of high-performance business solutions, and speaking at conferences worldwide.

Related Blog Posts

We hope you’ve found this to be helpful and are walking away with some new, useful insights. If you want to learn more, here are a couple of related articles that others also usually find to be interesting:

Manage Your Windows Applications With Winget

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Read More

Our Gear Is Packed and We're Excited to Explore With You

Ready to come with us? 

Together, we can map your company’s software journey and start down the right trails. If you’re set to take the first step, simply fill out our contact form. We’ll be in touch quickly – and you’ll have a partner who is ready to help your company take the next step on its software journey. 

We can’t wait to hear from you! 

Main Contact

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Together, we can map your company’s tech journey and start down the trails. If you’re set to take the first step, simply fill out the form below. We’ll be in touch – and you’ll have a partner who cares about you and your company. 

We can’t wait to hear from you! 

Montage Portal

Montage Furniture Services provides furniture protection plans and claims processing services to a wide selection of furniture retailers and consumers.

Project Background

Montage was looking to build a new web portal for both Retailers and Consumers, which would integrate with Dynamics CRM and other legacy systems. The portal needed to be multi tenant and support branding and configuration for different Retailers. Trailhead architected the new Montage Platform, including the Portal and all of it’s back end integrations, did the UI/UX and then delivered the new system, along with enhancements to DevOps and processes.

Logistics

We’ve logged countless miles exploring the tech world. In doing so, we gained the experience that enables us to deliver your unique software and systems architecture needs. Our team of seasoned tech vets can provide you with:

Custom App and Software Development

We collaborate with you throughout the entire process because your customized tech should fit your needs, not just those of other clients.

Cloud and Mobile Applications

The modern world demands versatile technology, and this is exactly what your mobile and cloud-based apps will give you.

User Experience and Interface (UX/UI) Design

We want your end users to have optimal experiences with tech that is highly intuitive and responsive.

DevOps

This combination of Agile software development and IT operations provides you with high-quality software at reduced cost, time, and risk.

Trailhead stepped into a challenging project – building our new web architecture and redeveloping our portals at the same time the business was migrating from a legacy system to our new CRM solution. They were able to not only significantly improve our web development architecture but our development and deployment processes as well as the functionality and performance of our portals. The feedback from customers has been overwhelmingly positive. Trailhead has proven themselves to be a valuable partner.

– BOB DOERKSEN, Vice President of Technology Services
at Montage Furniture Services

Technologies Used

When you hit the trails, it is essential to bring appropriate gear. The same holds true for your digital technology needs. That’s why Trailhead builds custom solutions on trusted platforms like .NET, Angular, React, and Xamarin.

Expertise

We partner with businesses who need intuitive custom software, responsive mobile applications, and advanced cloud technologies. And our extensive experience in the tech field allows us to help you map out the right path for all your digital technology needs.

  • Project Management
  • Architecture
  • Web App Development
  • Cloud Development
  • DevOps
  • Process Improvements
  • Legacy System Integration
  • UI Design
  • Manual QA
  • Back end/API/Database development

We partner with businesses who need intuitive custom software, responsive mobile applications, and advanced cloud technologies. And our extensive experience in the tech field allows us to help you map out the right path for all your digital technology needs.

Our Gear Is Packed and We're Excited to Explore with You

Ready to come with us? 

Together, we can map your company’s tech journey and start down the trails. If you’re set to take the first step, simply fill out the contact form. We’ll be in touch – and you’ll have a partner who cares about you and your company. 

We can’t wait to hear from you! 

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