Luxon Digital, Author at Luxon Digital

Greenfield or Brownfield

24 May, 2017 / by Luxon Digital / in ETL, OMNI-CHANNEL category

greenfield VS Brownfield In many disciplines including software, a greenfield project is one that lacks constraints imposed by prior work. No constraints are imposed by legacy code, no requirements to integrate with other legacy systems. The development process is straightforward, but the risks are high as well because you’re moving into uncharted territory.

Brownfield in software development & IT landscape, means to start a project based on prior work or to rebuild (engineer) a product from an existing software, platform or IT landscape of an organisation.

However, it is hard to decide which one is the right strategy to adapt when pursuing digital modernization of your organisation. When looking at digital modernization, it is important to consider the information flow, user access, process requirement and scalability of the project at hand. Making the right decision will ensure the costs remain low and the transition is seamless. Here are some areas to consider when looking choose the right approach.

In every case, it is important to understand what is already available what is required to be achieved and how to fill the gap. To obtain the same cost and performance benefits that online companies enjoy, established companies need an IT architecture that is modular, simple, customer-centric, and configurable. It is a must in today’s competitor landscape in almost every industry. A clear understanding of the goals, will allow clearer cost estimates and will produce more desirable, satisfactory results.

Conclusion

For us there’s no favorite. Every project should be balanced and coordinated between greenfield and brownfield approach. Like every business and organization is different, different areas of the organization may need a different approach. It all essentially is highly dependent on the core requirement and goals you are looking to achieve for your client or project. Sometimes building a new platform rather than purchase or lease an existing one, will work out to be more beneficial. A new facility may offer the maximum design flexibility and efficiency to meet the project’s needs. An existing facility may force the company to adjust based on the present design and features limitations.

5 Benefits of ETL Tools

24 May, 2017 / by Luxon Digital / in ETL category

ETL stands for Extract-Transform-Load, three database functions that are combined into one tool to pull data out of one database and place it into another database. Around 10 yrs ago nearly all the data warehouse systems were custom built, but the need for ETL software has increased with time and quite a lot of developers now use ETL tools in place of custom built solutions. Does custom coded (SQL) a data warehouse satisfy the needs of today, or is an ETL tool a preferred choice?

Let’s talk about the benefits of ETL tools.

We at LV Digital now generally recommend using an ETL tool. However, a custom-built platform can still be a practical choice for your business, especially when you have all your requirements laid out to granular specifics. In this blog we will give you a summary of the seven most crucial benefits of ETL tools and dish out some guidance on how to make the right choice for your organisation.

Visual flow

One of the biggest advantage of an ETL tool is that it gives a visual flow of the system’s logic if it is a flow based solution. Every ETL tool will present these flows in a different layout, but anything visual compared to a plain SQL, stored procedures and system scripts is a pleasure to have in stressful times.

Structured system design

ETL tools are created for one specific problem of data integration: populating a data warehouse or integrating data from more than one sources, or even relocating the data. Keeping in mind the maintenance and scalability, ETL tools provide a metadata-driven structure to the developers which is a huge advantage for companies building their data warehouse in early stages.

Operational resilience

Most of the custom-built data warehouses we have looked at are bit delicate: they have many developing operational difficulties. ETL tools deliver functionality and values for operating and monitoring the system in live environments. It is surely likely to design and build a well coded and structured hand-coded ETL platform. Nonetheless, it’s easier for a data warehouse / business intelligence team to build on the existing features of an ETL tool to build a strong ETL system from scratch.

Data-lineage and impact analysis

It should be a matter of clicks to click on a number and see full analysis or a breakdown of the number like how it was calculated, where the data was stored in the data warehouse, how it was transformed, when the data was most recently refreshed, and from what source system(s) the numbers were extracted. Impact analysis is the opposite of lineage: we’d like to look at a table or column in the source system and recognize which ETL procedures, tables, cubes, and user reports might be exaggerated if a structural change is required. If the ETL standards are absent, that hand-coded systems could depend on ETL vendors to provide this functionality — though, unfortunately, just half of them have done that so far.

Big Data

Most of ETL tools are capable of merging structured data with unstructured data in a centralized mapping. They can also handle huge amounts of data, without storing it in data warehouses. Hadoop-connectors or similar interfaces to big data sources are provided by almost 40% of the ETL tools nowadays. And the support for Big Data is growing every day.

Omni or Not To Omni

19 May, 2017 / by Luxon Digital / in OMNI-CHANNEL category

Companies that are excellent at engaging their customers on multi levels are the companies that do the best in today’s forever evolving technology driven landscape. A simple, consistent unified engagement strategy can create a memorable experience for your clients.

Its pays well when you constantly connect with your customers and get in front of them. Unified/ Omnichannel strategies is about one thing – creating seamless & consistent customer experience for your clients across multi channels whether it’s physical or digital.

Here is a blog on Buzzfeed about abandoned brick & mortar malls across USA. If this is not telling you something, you need a good lesson in technological advancement. Users are looking for products on mobiles, reading the reviews on tablets, trying them in a shop and buying them on their desktops at home. The flow can change, the channel they use to do an activity may change, however one thing remains the same – demand. People will look for stuff they want. They have been for years and they will continue doing it for years to come. Businesses need to leverage from this and use it to their advantage by increasing their exposure, making it consistent and manageable.

To create a cohesive and connected shopping experience is very important with the latest eCommerce expansion. It’s not about pushing the products to your clients, its about making it available when they want them. This is why understanding your clientele is the key for creating a successful unified experience. The key here is enabling customer to convert on any channel through consistent presence. Creating easy navigation, endless-aisle, unified carts, personalized data driven recommendations & promoting customer loyalty are the key ingredients of a successful omnichannel strategy.

Rather than nominating separate marketing budgets in silos, business need to adapt unified thinking and organise budgets for it’s entire marketing strategy. The aim is to deliver consistent communication across all aspects with unified force. A functional collaboration platforms are also required to unify efforts on physical and digital scale. We at Luxon Digital believe in combining efforts across channels to produce exceptional results!

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