Catenate Technology: Design, Deliver, Operate leading edge technology
Overview
Catenate has a large and proven expertise in building enterprise compliant, standard based, high quality software. Our services are shaped in order to deliver high quality solutions in a pragmatic, agile and cost effective way. We are able to merge business and non-functional requirements into a solution which respects enterprise and community patterns and limitation while staying still operational. We take over responsibilities during the whole life cycle of an application: From design, during delivery and at the end hosting and operations.
Since 2006 Catenate has been building mobile solutions.
We know how to handle offline scenarios, how to cope with bandwidth limitation and how to treat data in a secure way.
Building a technology based solution can be a painful road. Catenate is aware of that and is supporting our clients to mitigate the risk at an early stage. We are offering fast feasibilities studies and Proof of Concepts in order to select the right technology stack and architecture.
In the following chapters, you will find more details on how Catenate is designing, delivering and operating solutions.
Design solutions
We believe that the correct design of a solution is the foundation of its success when delivering any IT/IS application.
A well suited architecture respects business expectations, non-functional requirements (like scaling and security) and budget limitations and matches these. No more, no less.
To bring down the ideas and requirements into a well-designed runnable solution can be a challenge.
As everybody probably has experienced it before, guiding an IT project can be complex and managing it requires more than going through checklists.
A Catenate core competence is the successful implementation of IT projects. We know what to do to make a project successful. No matter if the delivery is within Catenate or done by another partner.
We will guide the business idea to a successful implement. To be able to do so, Catenate takes over the following service during the design phase:
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Business assessment
Having an idea, which will improve business, is the spark. But bringing the idea down to a solution can be quite challenging. In order to harden the idea and to shape the solution, Catenate will assess the processes and will support the business in discussing the right questions and to define a proper To-Be vision including functional and non-functional requirements.
Furthermore because of our long lasting expertise in the process areas Procurement, Sourcing, Sales and Marketing, Catenate is able to identify new requirements together with the clients.
With this combination of business expertise and technology skills, we are able to immediately evaluate business requirements against technological feasibility and to estimate effort at a very early stage.
Architectural assessment
What is the best, right sized architecture for your idea, which will fit nicely into your existing infrastructure and can be still operated? Such a question is the core of our architectural assessment service. Catenate can challenge existing architecture and will also design best-fit architecture having such questions in mind.
Project Management
Every IT project is special. Full stop.
Different actors, languages, expectations, assumptions and limitations have to be consolidated and aligned in order to identify a feasible and most promising project approach.
We see Project Management as a very important and active contribution to every project success, not as a passive checklist task.
Our approaches are influenced by the different project approaches - like XP, Scrum, Kanban - which we are using in a pragmatic, not in a dogmatic way.
Test management
Easy solutions are already available. The challenge these days is, to establish more complex solutions into business successfully. To ensure the correctness of higher degree of complexity is not easy and requires expertise and experience.
Catenate developed testing approaches which cover the complete bandwidth of testing. From developing a test strategy, designing test plans, arranging test session, analyzing test results and conducting automatic, endurance and load testing: Catenate will do it!
Performance assessments
One of the most problematic and most monitored success factors of a solution is the performance. Without performance, no acceptance. It is as easy like this.
But how to improve the performance of existing and productive applications? How to identify bottlenecks? How to smoothly improve performance without redesigning the application? All these questions can be answered by the Catenate team.
Release and Quality management
Especially in agile driven projects and in projects with a lot of external dependencies on systems, processes or organizations, the coordination of releases can get quite complex soon.
Agreed functional sets, test plans, roll-out sequences and fallback scenarios are crucial in order to ensure business continuity. Catenate faced such challenges for global clients and complex organization repeatedly and bundled these experiences into a method for handling such complexities.
Security assessments
To ensure user and client data is not misused is one of crucial challenges of the connected life and the possibilities that the Internet brought. To ensure security is a very sensible topic and can be very expensive and brand damaging if it is not done correctly.
Catenate supports our clients in ensuring the right level of security for their data, in performing penetration tests and in analyzing further structural and organizational weaknesses. Additionally, we will document the results properly.
Deliver solutions
Catenate builds large, enterprise compliant applications with focus on Java technologies. These applications can be web based or using rich clients: Catenate will simply design the solution which will fit your requirements. Catenate is using standard, proven and robust technologies when building a new application. But we are always open for new approaches, if they can contribute to success.
NoSQL databases, Event driven architectures, Complex Event processing, or semantic web technologies are some of the newer approaches which we have successfully integrated in our projects and gained a lot of experiences with.
Delivery is our strength and the reason why we are chosen very often by our clients. We deliver in a pragmatic, quality oriented and cost effective way: Catenate is re-using proven and robust technologies and libraries. We offer a near shore model with Bulgaria and Italy, in order to leverage cost savings.
Together with our clients we developed a collaboration model which allows agile and short interaction cycles onsite while developing offsite. Through this Catenate is able to combine the best of on- and offsite development.
Although we are curious on every new and promising technology, our delivery team is focusing on the following technologies.
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Client/server architectures based on Java (JEE or Spring based)
Catenate develops Web based business application with Ajax enabled frontend, tuned for responsiveness and user experiences. Our delivered solutions are handling thousands of users in a global context.
As a logical enhancement, we develop rich clients with a higher degree of business logic on the client side allowing more possibilities on data handling (sorting, drag'n'drop, interaction with other client tool, etc.)
- Mobile enabled solutions
Our proven client/server framework was extended for the mobile usage. The challenge here is to ensure proper device handling, allow offline scenarios and handle limited bandwidth. We also know how to cope with the security demands when using applications in a business context.
Catenate is developing for mobiles since 2006 and we have built a stable, secure and robust framework to cope with these challenges.
All our solutions are device independent, running especially on Blackberry, Android and iOS. Depending on the usage, our solutions are developed as native apps, web apps based on the HTML5 standards, or hybrids.
- Portal and portlet development
Portals are important platforms in Enterprises to present data and functionality of heterogeneous application with a single point of access.
Catenate has been developing portals and portlets since 2002. We have a long list of references on portlets (based on JSR 168, JSR 268, Websphere Portalfactory) and do know how to cope with integration challenges.
Standard product services
Catenate is offering implementation services for the following product "standards"
- SAP CA/BC module (Abap development, ALE and EDI configuration, Workflow development)
- SAP BI (ETL routines, Design and Implementation of Info models)
- IBM Datapower (SOAP and REST services, JMS handling, XSLT implementation)
- Tibco product suite (see Integration)
Feasibility studies and Proof of Concepts
The investment that is needed to deliver a solution can be quite significant. Catenate knows that a 'good feeling' and confidence into the implementation design is very important.
Because of our playground, which we use internally for evaluating new technologies and trends, we are able to implement proof of concepts, prototypes or feasibility studies fast and with a manageable effort.
Operate solutions
The correct design and implementation are important milestones to escort an idea to a solution. But there are not visible, if the solution is not running stable.
Catenate is used to take over responsibility throughout the whole solution lifecycle, including deployment, operation and archiving.
In detail we offer the following services:
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Packaging and Deployment Automation
To build the right package with the right components with the right test coverage for different environment can be complex. Our team has developed methods and tools to ensure a high degree of automation and the possibility to deploy in different environments, including the cloud.
Also we are introducing and monitoring the Continues Integration Process.
Platform management
To ensure that the solution is working as expected is one of our key services. Because of our broad technical expertise, we are able to think as the business: Just keep the application running independent if an issue is a platform, application, database or whatever issue.
Our team will identify alarms not only restricted to a technology, OS or application: We are thinking vertically, end to end!
To do so, we are able to take over the system and application monitoring (based on Nagios or HP OpenView), track proper performance, conduct permanent capacity management (in order not to overload machines) and tune virtual machines.
The platform management can be done onsite with clients assets or in our data center.
Operational readiness checks
To ensure, that a release candidate has the sufficient quality standard is an important step during the release process. The readiness check evaluates the status of an application considering functional and non-functional expectations and derives from that a GO/NO-GO recommendation.
Catenate has an extensive pool of quality measure points and checklist, which makes a release readiness more transparent and comparable.
Service desk
To be available for our clients and end user is very important for roll out of a solution. Catenate offers you an appropriate and competent service desk able to handle your request on a 1st, 2nd or 3rd level.
Our service staff has direct access to the developers and architects and is therefore able to answer also to very demanding requests.
Hosting
Catenate is able to host the solution and to offer a full-stack services. The hosting is done within our data center or collaborating with the major cloud providers as Amazon, Rackspace and Go-Grid.
References
Our dedication is appreciated by many clients. One of the internationally well-known are:
Summary
To summarize, our clients and we see us as
- Experienced, but still curious
- Flexible and client orientated
- Cost sensible, with an optional near shore development basis in Bulgaria
- Effective and pragmatic, no play around
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