TAMPA, FL -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 03/27/06 -- Skyway Software, the award winning SOA solution
for developing and delivering custom applications and services, is pleased
to announce a new addition to its client base. Southern States, a $1.2
billion leader in the farming and agriculture industry, is raising the bar
on implementing applications by adopting a Service Oriented Architecture
(SOA). Using SOA, Southern States will not only be implementing
revenue-producing applications, but they will also be meeting the needs of their members even faster.
Thomas R. Scribner, President & CEO, related that the Southern States team
wasn't looking to hop on any buzzword bandwagon, they were simply looking
to deliver integrated applications faster. Scribner states, "We are
looking forward to using the Skyway SOA Platform to build systems that
improve business processes and customer service to offer continual
improvement for the organization. With the Skyway SOA Platform, we will be
able to integrate and potentially re-write our systems which are
functionally rich, but technically challenged, sometimes difficult to
integrate and somewhat inflexible due to maturity. Ultimately, re-writing
these systems and the ability to write new applications faster and cheaper
will help the IT Department save money, increase productivity and support
business demands -- all factors that will add dollars to our bottom-line."
Karen Lankford, VP of Information Systems at Southern States, adds, "The
magnitude of the impact Skyway's SOA Platform has on real business issues
can be measured by our Zone Pricing project. Zone Pricing is a critical
issue for Southern States. Our current systems limit us to one price per
product. Even with more than 1200 locations, if a store has a territory
competitive pricing issue and a product price needs to be changed it has to
be done manually. If the price is not modified quickly, Southern States
could lose a sale. The Zone Pricing project effort alone is projected to
generate millions of dollars per year in revenue for Southern States."
A common concern about any new solution is that the expected revenues
generated by the project might be offset by the cost of implementing the
new solution. Case studies from Skyway Software report that starting with
the first project the Skyway SOA Platform enables IT teams to complete
projects faster and less expensively. Lankford explains, "The Skyway SOA
Platform is one of those special finds, it is a technology solution that
improves time-to-market while decreasing expenses. Using our current staff
and technology approach, to make necessary code changes for this project
would take 1,500 man hours of IT development effort. Yet, by using the
Skyway Platform, we've estimated being able to build the application to
maintain the prices within 360 hours! Then, our staff only has to expend
650 hours on modifying custom code to send/receive the prices to the
various systems. The speed of this development will allow us to change
Zone Pricing faster and complete the project spending fewer dollars."
Skyway Software agreed to assist and now has completed helping Southern
States in its initial application development for the Zone Pricing project.
Jared Rodriguez, UDDI Specification author and CEO of Skyway Software,
states, "At Skyway our goal is to make the adoption of SOA as smooth as
possible. It is exciting to see so many customers benefit from the Skyway
SOA Platform which delivers J2EE-based Web applications faster than
anything on the market regardless of whether the client is building new
applications to alleviate application backlog, meet customer service needs
or due to compliance issues."
Specific touch point areas for the Skyway SOA Platform project included
building applications to integrate existing systems without committing to a
specific platform for these apps. Lankford adds, "For example, prior to
Skyway Software, we would have selected to build the Zone Pricing App using
OneWorld and would have committed our resources in one area. With the
implementation of the Skyway SOA Platform in our Shop, we feel that we can
utilize this across S&P groups and not overly commit any one group."
Another area of improvement involves building applications to provide more
consistency among S&P Groups. Lankford adds, "For example, prior to Skyway
Software, we had no commonality to error codes and messages across groups.
With the Skyway SOA Platform, Southern States will begin various internal
projects to produce common error codes and messages across applications to
ease support issues. Skyway Software also provides the ability to easily
incorporate e-mail messages and integrate Help Text within applications.
This will not only speed the delivery of applications but allow us to build
and monitor more consistently across applications therefore reducing
overhead of development."
In addition, the Skyway Software installation has also given Southern
States the ability to build applications based on data stored in disparate
systems. Lankford adds, "The Skyway SOA Platform will allow us to begin
projects that previously required a senior person understanding that
particular system to build the application related to that system. With
Skyway Software, we can assign a person with less experience in this
application to connect to those databases/tables and build the integrated
application. We can also incorporate technical documentation directly into
the application without going through a second pass of the application."
The Skyway Software SOA Platform will deliver tangible results to Southern
States. "That's the point," according to Rodriguez. From his perspective,
"What good is technology if it doesn't deliver on the promise of positively
impacting your business? The goal is to find a solution that doesn't add to
a company's service delivery challenge; but rather, simplifies the process
of building and deploying services."
In an effort to show the tangible dollar-value of implementing the Skyway
SOA Platform the Skyway Software team designed an ROI calculator for
Southern States which has been generalized and posted on the Website
(www.skywaysoftware.com) for anyone to evaluate potential project returns.
This is just one of many tools Skyway Software provides on their Website to
help demystify the uncertainty of SOA, also available are white papers, a
terminology dictionary, and case studies.
About Southern States Cooperative, Incorporated -- www.southernstates.com
Since its beginning as a Virginia Seed Service in 1923, Southern States has
been at the forefront of agricultural advances throughout its 80 years in
business and is now a $1.2 billion farmer-owned cooperative. As a result
of its leadership role in agriculture, Southern States has continued to
expand and today encompasses some 1,200 retail locations in 23 states.
Owned by more than 300,000 farmers, the cooperative purchases, manufactures
and processes feed, seed, fertilizer, farm supplies and fuel.
Skyway Software is the award winning provider of SOA design and delivery
solutions. The Skyway SOA Platform enables companies seeking a
competitive advantage to design and deliver custom applications and
services faster and cheaper. This shortens the time-to-business impact
and decreases development expenses, while allowing IT to adapt quickly to
dynamic business fluctuations. Ultimately, the Skyway SOA Platform offers
maximum infrastructure flexibility by accelerating and simplifying custom
applications and services.
About Aaron Reed Aaron Reed is an assistant professor specializing in software architecture and design and .NET development at Neumont University in Salt Lake City, UT. He has worked professionally in the industry for over 12 years as a lead architect/designer, development manager, and VP of development. When he isn't spending time reading up on the latest in software development, Aaron loves spending time with his beautiful wife and three children.
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