Customer Magazine Intersys AG
Editorial Dear reader What are the consequences of the short noticed and very unexpected release of the minimum conversion rate between the Euro and the Swiss Franc for IT Service providers? Export oriented companies know the phenomena of losing money from short term changes due to surrounding conditions very well. IT companies, however, are facing yet another controversial question: how to deal with the price pressure that arises from near- and offshoring activities in software development. Making inexpensive, foreign resources available will most likely see a dramatic change in the Swiss IT landscape. Is this the beginning of a deindustrialization, the export of high quality skills, as we have seen it in other industries before? The IT industry is predestined for this change.
It even created the necessary means to do so: worldwide communication and data exchange has been made possible in the past years. Thus the search for each individual company’s position in this changing landscape will be a major task of the immediate future. However, I’m confident that finding the right path will also lead to new possibilities. From sports, it is well known that leaving one’s comfort zone will also open a big potential for improved performance.
Jiri Petr CEO
SPOTLIGHT 1/2015
Tomorrow’s new employees
TCBE club started well
Intersys is constantly looking for new talents that bring new technology know-how into our company. As an employer in the region of Solothurn, it is not quite easy to find these resources. This is why Intersys participated in the ETH Kontaktparty in March in Zurich, a fair dedicated to show finishing IT students the employer landscape. Intersys was able to position itself as a
In the last Spotlight edition, we communicated the founding and first meetings of TCBE Chapter Solothurn. In the meantime, first member meetings have taken place and the organisation is forming itself to be operational. There is a search going on for topics to work on.
great place to work, an attractive employer with many benefits . Maybe we’ll be able to inform you about new employees in one of the next Spotlight editions.
It became clear that there’s a need for cooperation in the following areas already:
• Joint recruiting and apprentice programs • School education programs for IT professionals • Creating synergies in company interna trainings Interested to learn more? The club is actively recruiting members. Details on www.tcbe.ch
Intersys movie evening “the circle” During our traditional movie evening, part of the Solothurn movie festival, which was celebrating its 50th anniversary, we were very happy to welcome more than 150 participants. After being welcomed by Seraina Rohrer, director of the festival, we received a insight into the making and the historical background of the movie “the circle”. The movie’s theme is the happenings of the gay community of Zurich in the 50’s and 60’s. In a mix of documentary and feature film, the story showed how the gay community struggled for its acceptance in Switzerland. After the movie, the guests gathered for a late apero and to extend the networking that started before watching the film. There was ample time to not only discuss business matters. We received a lot of very positive feedback from our guests, many of them returning year over year to our traditional event.
Customers case studies
Intersys supports energy optimization for Switzerland
The SME model application comes with an up-to-date web interface
Intersys and the energy agency for businesses (EnAW) are working together since 2006. The cooperation started with a “monitoring tool for the efficiency model EnAW” which subsequently was improved and renamed to “SME-Model”. This tool is highly vital for all EnAW consultants and their clients in the quest to sustainably reduce their energy footprint. The application can be used by SME customers that produce less than 1’500 tons of CO 2 and have less than 1 Mio
CHF in energy cost annually. Participation can be either mandator y or voluntar y. A consultant is assigned to support the company defining target savings and the resulting measures which will then be implemented over a period of 10 years. Special web based tools have been developed by Intersys for the analysis and controlling of the activities. By participating in the SME-Model, SME’s can optimize power consumption and reduce energy cost. Additionally,
they are building up the requirements necessar y to be released from CO 2 taxes and other local regulations. If the goals are const antly met, the company is allowed to carr y the label “CO 2 and KWh reduced”. The SME-Model application consists of a modern web interface and is constantly adapted to the changes happening in the t e ch n o l o g i e s t h a t s u p p o r t e n e r g y efficiency improvements. In the application, there’s also a set of complex ser vices that provide algorithms for
calculation of energy savings from various mechanisms. The cooperation over the years has proven to be ver y efficient and valuable for both sides. Intersys not only provides the development of the application but also supports it across the whole lifecycle.
About EnAW Since 2001, the energy agency for businesses (EnAW) provides a service portEnAW Admin
EnAW Consultant
folio around energy management to all of its participating customers. This service includes widely accepted products, services and ISO-50001 compliant tools. The implementation of the measures
Internet
includes business related mechanisms to improve energy efficiency resulting in
SME-Model Companies Web Server
SME-Model Database
EnAW Customer Database
EnAW Customer DB Abacus
a reduction of energy usage and CO2 emissions. EnAW is a nonprofit organisation provided by businesses to the benefit of businesses. More information on: www.enaw.ch
Mail Server
The SME-Model tool of the energy agency for businesses (EnAW) has been developed with the help of Intersys to fully support the needs of small and medium businesses. It has proven very valuable. The cooperation with Intersys is efficient and professional. Rochus Burtscher, Member of the Management Team, EnAW
Product / Services
Learn to know our development team of server applications Intersys Services Intersys covers all aspects of delivering enterprise critical applications including specification, development and support. Our engineers have the necessar y skills in business analysis, development of application and database, test management and support. Our customers benefit from having a “one stop shop” solution by only dealing with Intersys for all aspects of the resulting application – over the lifetime of the system. Additional details can be found in our portrait on: http://www.intersys.ch/ en/about-us/portrait
Intersys Team Server Applications: Daniel Müller, Stephan Gasser, Joel Bodmer, Joel Ingold, Andreas Christen, Dominic Stampfli. Missing: André Vocat
The main goal of Daniel Müller and his team is to provide a tailored software solution to each and every customer. The team is only satisfied if this goal is achieved while making sure that the timely and financial requirements are met and the quality lives up to the customers’ expectations. Which are today’s “hot” topics in terms of technologies for server applications? These are, for instance, NoSQL Databases which are used today for big data purposes. We are using Apache Cassandra, a Open Source DB provided by DataStax. What services does your team offer? Why should a customer chose Intersys? My team has two areas of services: Java applications and databases. Some team members develop java applications only, others databases. Within the team, there’s close collaboration. The value for the customer Is in our consulting and in the resulting solution that reflects his requirements. Many of our telco customers require 7”24h application availability coupled with high performance which is where our core competency lies. What are todays’ challenges for a customer when looking for sourcing a new application? There are two areas he has to focus on: the financial side and the technological aspects to optimally suit his business
needs. His biggest challenge, however, is to translate business needs into requirements and this is where we can help him with our proven abilities. How do you make sure your team has the right skills needed in todays’ customer projects? Primarily be constantly investing into education of the team. This can either be by self-learning or by taking classes, up to university grade, which we also co-fund. Our internal technology groups take up trends and match them with current customer requirements. From these findings, we have a process to establish new skills area by organizing classroom trainings or plan on the job learning. Agile development is a hot topic: why should a customer engage with Intersys using such a methodology? Agile development has some clear benefits over the traditional waterfall model. Projects goals in terms of financial aspects, duration and project plan improve clearly. The real benefit to the customer is in the fact, that he has visible results already after a short period of time and can more flexibly influence the
outcome of the project. Both parties benefit from this approach. However, this also means that the customer has to invest more of his time into the project because of the shorter deliver y cycles. Our experience with Scrum is ver y positive because it also gives the developer a more active role in driving the development to a more optimal result. Technology is a jungle for most customers. What are the important aspects for a customer when chosing a technology for his project? Quite often, the vertical market, in which the customer is in, shows clear technology trends. It also helps to keep an eye on the market trends and be open to new approaches. Intersys, specializing besides other on the telco market, has some very good references showing our capabilities to drive new technologies. Customers should be able to articulate the benefit from a new technology. There are social networks like Xing or LinkedIn that have specialized groups that discuss such technological trends and their effects on the customers businesses. How do you judge the actual employment situation for developers in Switzerland? It is quite hard to find good, educated employees on the market. Being a considerably small company, we need spe
cialists that still can cover a broad range of development techniques. Today, many of our customers require to have our developers at their site, asking our people to work for months in another city which is not what our employment model is based on. However, an experienced developer has very good chances to find his dream job if only he can market himself well. What are your biggest challenges developing server applications? To meet exactly the customer expectation with what we deliver, especially also in terms of money, time and quality. Showing flexibility to deal with changing targets. The use of agile methods have improved the situation here quite considerably. Additionally, it is important to work very closely with the other involved teams, e.g. the test managers.
News
New employees@Intersys AG
Winner of our contest
Since 9th Feb 2015 we have a new employee in our IT department. Atilla Kocaay is a certified IT technical professional who brings the necessary skills and first experience in maintaining IT system infrastructure. Besides working on the internal IT, Atilla will also be providing his ser vices in the context of customer projects. We wish Atilla a lot of success and joy in his new position.
The winner of the contest from our last Spotlight Edition is Julian Portmann. Mr. Portmann works at Centris AG, Solothurn heading the Integration business unit of the IT service provider. He’s enjoying the win of an iPad Air 2 64 GB/WiFi which was handed over to him on Jan 23rd 2015. We wish him a lot of fun using the device.
Quality assurance: Agile and across processes
Cassandra Services
Quality assurance has to rely on accepted methods that work across the whole development process. Intersys uses these methods (e.g. HERMES or Rational Unified Process) to the benefits of customer projects. In the area of software development, Scrum is used as the pre-
Our services portfolio can now be found in a document that shows the various areas Intersys can provide support when dealing with Apache Cassandra and DataStax Enterprise software. Intersys is a reliable partner for designing, implementing and tuning Cassandra based
NoSQL databases. Details can be found in the new datasheet on: http://www.inter sys.ch/en/services/ cassandra-consulting-services
Participate in our contest and, with a little luck, you can win a leisure trip for 2 persons from Solothurn to the top of Weissenstein using the newely built cablecar. On the top, you will have stunning views of the central part of Switzerland and we’ll enrich your trip with a gift certificate for the restaurant of the Kurhaus Weissenstein. Participate by scanning the QR-code and filling out the resulting form or visit our website www.intersys.ch/contest. The winner will be drawn from all entries. Contest deadline is 30th April 2015.
All people aged 18 and older are eligible to take part in the
ferred agile methodology. This is complemented on the testing side where matching industr y accepted methods are applied. We are ver y glad to show you how we effectively use these methods in your project!
Get Intersys involved – your trusted partner for Cassandra ser vices.
Comicstrip von Andreas Thiel
Contest
Since what year does the cooperation between EnAW and Intersys exist? a) 2000 b) 2006 c) 2012 flickr.com / seilbahnweissenstein
Partic ip
ate a Win! nd
contest. Only one entry per person. There is no legal recourse after the prize draw. The prize draw is excluded from the jurisdiction of any court. The winner will be notified in writing by eMail and/or letter. There is no cash alternative to the prize. The prize is not transferable to another person. Information entered by the participants can be used by Intersys for advertising purposes, however, they will not be passed on to third parties. Employees of Intersys AG and Business4you AG are excluded from the contest. The contest will close on 30th April 2015.