Components of a Business Intelligence Solution

There are many different technical frameworks available for implementing a business intelligence solution, all offered by a variety of vendors. In a general sense though, there are three overarching pieces to business intelligence:

  • Integration and the data warehouse
  • Data cubes and analytics
  • Dashboards, KPI’s and reports

Understanding these pieces and how they work in tandem to address organizational needs is critical in software consulting to achieve a successful implementation. I will be covering one each week for the next few weeks, starting with integration and the data warehouse.

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RFID Technology and Oil & Gas: Streamline with Custom Software

Oil and Gas RFID Software

We are all pretty familiar with RFID technology, as most big ticket items we see at the store are protected by them. When it comes to the oil and gas industry, the uptake has been much lower, which is surprising when you think about how much more they stand to lose. If a pipe goes missing, or even worse, doesn’t get needed repairs because nobody could find it, the stakes are upwards of thousands and millions of dollars.

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Manufacturing web portals.

Manufacturing Web Portals: Their Uses and Capabilities

More than ever, manufacturers face increasing challenges in a dynamic marketplace. To differentiate from competitors, many have taken steps to transform the user experience for customers and suppliers. In particular, enterprise-wide manufacturing web portals have been critical in connecting people and platforms.

Still, it’s vitally important to note the difference between intranet web pages and web portals.

Websites Versus Web Portals

According to Techopedia, “A website is a collection of publicly accessible, interlinked Web pages that share a single domain name. Websites can be created and maintained by an individual, group, business or organization to serve a variety of purposes. Together, all publicly accessible websites constitute the World Wide Web.”

Another way to define a website is as an interlinked group of web pages. In more technical terms, web pages are digital documents formatted in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML).

At this point, things may get a tad bit confusing. After all, both websites and web portals provide visitors with information gathered from sources such as search engines, online forums, and social media posts. The difference is that web portals are user-centric in nature. While anyone can see information on a website, a user must log in to a web portal to access data. And, information on a web portal can change, depending on the user. Essentially, a web portal is a customized library that aids users in navigating information from various sources. Web portals also include advanced features that facilitate collaboration, task management, and social networking.

How a Web Portal Can Benefit Your Manufacturing Enterprise

In essence, a web portal is one of the best ways to upgrade your website. It will help you convey information to suppliers and employees in the most efficient way. Some of the benefits of having your own web portal are as follows:

  • Self-service portals decrease Opex costs by providing customers with the means of resolving issues on their own. As a result, you can reduce the required personnel needed to handle customer service issues. You also won’t have to expand your customer service department as your organization scales.
  • Web portals increase productivity levels since employees need to handle fewer support tickets. This allows them to invest more time with customers who can’t resolve their issues via the web portal. Essentially, your enterprise can provide better customer service when it counts.
  • Self-service portals educate suppliers while giving them the tools for resolving supply chain challenges. With features such as demand forecasting, procurement management, event-triggered notifications, and role-based content delivery, manufacturers can achieve enterprise-level supply chain efficiency.
  • Web portals are great at boosting web traffic on your regular website. It indicates that a manufacturing company is a reliable source of information as well as a thought leader. In turn, this increases trust and visibility for your manufacturing enterprise.

Vertical Versus Horizontal Web Portals

Web portals are classified into two types: vertical and horizontal.

To understand what a vertical web portal is, one must first understand the definition of a vertical market. According to Investopedia, a vertical market encompasses a group of companies focused on a specific niche. Essentially, companies in a vertical market cater to that “market’s specialized needs and generally do not serve a broader market.”

Vertical Portals (Vortals)

These portals connect people to niche content relating to specific vertical markets. Known as “vortals,” they provide industry solutions, related industry news, and market research. They also facilitate collaborative efforts through digital forums. Meanwhile, business intelligence tools provide actionable insights into the integrity of your supply chain.

Vortals are perfect for a diverse range of manufacturing sectors. Additionally, since many of these sectors specialize in particular niches, a majority of manufacturing web portals are vortals.

Horizontal Portals

Horizontal portals differ from their vertical counterparts in that they focus on a wide range of industries. Other than not focusing on a particular niche, horizontal portals offer many of the same features as vertical portals.

At Entrance, we’re focused on helping your employees and suppliers find information and perform industry-related tasks. In addition, we take an agile approach to web portal development. This means we can add new features as your enterprise changes or adapts to market conditions. If you’re interested in developing a dynamic portal that serves the evolving needs of your customers and suppliers, chat with us today.

Big engineering and big data.

What Manufacturers Need to Know About Big Data Engineering

Big data has transformed the way modern businesses approach their daily operations — and this holds true for many manufacturing firms, as well. While the Lean methodology (Kaizen, TPM, etc.) and Six Sigma principles have played their part in optimizing efficiency across several manufacturing sectors, many industries (such as energy and construction) still endure extreme variability in production processes. 

The reality is, manufacturing environments yield an overwhelming number of internal challenges, ranging from machine failures to siloed quality control systems. Many manufacturing firms require a highly granular approach to identifying, analyzing, and adjusting fault detection processes. In that vein, big data engineering can provide a workable solution for companies in this predicament.

Big Data vs Data Engineering

It’s important to note that data engineering goes beyond what big data offers a manufacturing firm in its “raw” form. But, what’s the difference between big data and data engineering?

Big data refers, of course, to extremely large data sets that may yield patterns and trends across millions or billions of computational data points. A big data architect will design the technical framework for such a system. However, a data engineer will “build” what the big data solutions architect has already conceptualized.

In short, big data engineers develop, maintain, audit, analyze, and implement big data solutions within organizations. They have experience in working with data storage solutions, and are experts at building and utilizing big data processing systems. Moreover, big data engineers have an in-depth understanding of the design, functionality, and use cases of high-performance algorithms that cover huge data sets. Thus, data engineering is a natural result of the advent of big data; in essence, it’s big data’s logical, practical endpoint.

Use Cases for Data Engineering

Big data engineering has countless possible use cases in the manufacturing industry. For example, data engineers can:

  • Identify bottlenecks in the manufacturing process and recommend potential solutions
  • Design and/or adjust operational workflow to yield increased productivity
  • Analyze big data for manufacturing interdependencies to inform targeted process changes

As an example of data engineering in action, consider the following case study:

Biopharmaceutical production teams must often monitor over 200 variables within the manufacturing workflow to ensure that end products remain completely free of harmful contaminants. The very nature of this production process often leads to high variances in quality from one batch to the next. 

One biopharmaceutical company decided to leverage big data engineering to increase its yield in vaccine production without taking on additional budgetary demands. A project team segmented the company’s entire manufacturing process into granular clusters of correlating production activities. Then, for each cluster, the team compiled a database of highly detailed information about process steps, source materials, and other key factors.

Subsequently, the team of data engineers audited the data set for the most influential interdependent parameters throughout the entire process. They found that nine parameters were most influential, including time to cell inoculation. Armed with this data, they recommended targeted process changes to those nine parameters to increase production efficiency. In the end, the company was able to increase its vaccine yield by over 50% and save over $5 million dollars a year.

Leveraging Big Data Engineering to Increase Manufacturing Productivity

Manufacturing companies that leverage big data solutions will see an increase in productivity, a decrease in downtime, and the generation of larger revenue streams. Of course, such results won’t come about overnight. Developing and implementing advanced analytics platforms takes time and effort. However, with the right partner in hand, manufacturing companies can remain focused on their core competencies. And, they can do so while reaping the benefits of big data engineering.

At Entrance Consulting, our analytics experts can handle the entire process of complex data analytics and management for your business. If you’d like to learn more, reach out to us today.

Microsoft’s New ‘Spaces’ Feature and What it Means for Your Business

The Verge recently published an article about a video leak of Microsoft’s new ‘Spaces’ project, which is designed help you organize your O365 emails, meetings, and docs into project spaces. This follows the trend we see in general, which is that people are moving away from centralization of both Content and Collaboration.

Rather than monolithic intranet projects which are top-down content production, we see distributed teams and micro sites that hang off of a central content hub, all orchestrated with search and workflow.

We see with communication, far less top-down one-way communication and much more Peer-to-peer conversation, even from management to ground floor employees

Further, the move from email (broadcast only communication, where sorting of ‘streams’ is the recipient’s responsibility) to Teams, where content is pre-sorted by the sender (in that a sender has to think “this message belongs to X team in Y channel).

Whereas the first two are breaking the traditional “box” of the “intranet” and the “inbox”, they both can result in a kind of content sprawl.  As I move from one “inbox” to dozens (potentially even more) of special-purpose “channels,” how do I know where I should read?  How do I find related ideas if they are not in the same Channel?  Imagine that streams of content could be “intelligently” comingled – joining back together related bits of content into… a Space.

Spaces also gives us a peak into breaking the “box” of the “Document” as mentioned in the article, something Microsoft has been exploring for decades (how can be put a graph into a powerpoint slide without having to launch excel?)  Embedding is the current solution, which dates back to the early 90s (“OLE” = Object Linking & Embedding technology)  Spaces is a natural successor to this, powered by AI and web-based (vs. document-based) content.

I actually have been talking on these points lately to MANY customers/prospects.  Nobody is really building these huge 500K+ intranets anymore.  They are building lots of fit-for-purpose team sites with the money going to workflow (PowerAutomate, Forms, PowerApps on top of Lists), content/metadata design, etc.

 

React Native vs. Xamarin in 2021

We’ve recently been developing a mobile app using Xamarin, a departure from our usual stack of React Native for mobile apps. Both frameworks allow for cross-platform development. This means that we can write the code once, and have it work on both iOS and Android. Normally, these two operating systems use two completely different programming languages and completely different APIs to access them. So cross-platform development saves us a lot of time. Unlike Xamarin, React Native does require us to write native code for maybe 10% of the project, but there are still some aspects of React Native that I miss when working with Xamarin.

About Xamarin

Xamarin has its roots in a project that was meant to make it possible to code in Microsoft’s C# language on platforms other than Windows. It has since expanded to not only include iOS and Android in the list of platforms it supports, but to provide full wrapper functions to the entire API of both platforms. This means that, with very few tweaks, one codebase can easily compile and run on both operating systems. The team behind Xamarin did such a good job that Microsoft took notice and purchased the company.

About React Native

React is a web framework created by Facebook that allows them to create more complex user interfaces than previous technologies had. Combined with JavaScript, it can be used as a complete web application development toolset. Some developers created apps for mobile devices using React by simply embedding their web app into a webview in the native app. This isn’t an ideal solution because there is no convenient way for the web app to talk to native code.

React Native is the solution to that problem. To developers, the framework still functions exactly like good ‘ole web-based React does. They write the same code, using the same languages. The difference is that React Native then converts that CSS and JavaScript code into the native code of the targeted mobile platform. While it doesn’t have quite the same completeness that Xamarin does in terms of how much of the native API it supports, React Native still gets your project most of the way onto both mobile platforms with just one set of code.

React Native Features I Miss

React Native coming from React, which is a web development framework, has a different mindset to it than Xamarin does. Some of the results of this mindset are features that I really miss having available to me as we work with Xamarin. I wanted to spend some time explaining the features of React that I’d rather I didn’t currently have to do without.

Hot Reloading

React Native uses JavaScript, which is an interpreted language. Not having to compile the code already saves a ton of time, but React Native takes it a step further with hot reloading. The code on your device (or simulator, if you are not running on a physical device) can detect when you want to send it changes. This means that you can update your test build not only without compiling, but without having to reinstall the files on the device at all.

This saves me a ton of time. It’s especially useful when you are trying to dial in some variable just right because in instances like that, where there is a lot of rapid-fire iteration, even a few seconds of extra compile and install time can add up fast. This is especially true when working on a physical device because the process of updating a test app is much more involved with other frameworks.

Components Components Components

The two frameworks, though they share the goal of being cross-platform, go about that goal in different ways. Xamarin was created from the perspective of coding and API compatibility. React was designed, from its early days, to be an easy to use UI toolkit. Creating small reusable components is at the heart of React – and so the same is true in React-Native. Xamarin simply does not have the same flexibility for creating customized controls because its primary purpose is as a wrapper around existing controls.

Composition is king in React-land. Higher-order-components are a great example of this. HOCs allow us to write separate components that share similar functionality without reducing code. They do for UI design what object-oriented programming did for coding. React’s composability combined with JavaScript’s dynamic nature is a great landscape for building UIs over the XAML and C# used by Xamarin.

Over-The-Air (OTA) Updates

I’ve already talked about how much time the hot loading feature saves by not requiring you to push an update to the device in the traditional way. Hot loading can save minutes on iteration time. But React Native really saves time with its Over-the-Air update features. This allows us to push an update to our actual users over the air, without having to go through the approval process of the app stores. This feature saves days off of the time it takes to get an update in the hands of users.

In the case of bug fixes, knowing that our customers are taken care of as soon as possible is a huge relieve. It is always a bit stressful waiting for Apple to review an update, but its that much more stressful when the update is important and you want to get it out as soon as possible. OTA updates from React Native save developers who use it from a ton of stress.

The Community

React and React Native are hugely popular tools. The Github stats for a given project aren’t inherently impressive, but having a lot of users does often come with some benefits. It is never very difficult to find tutorials for something that you want to do in React. The large community also means that if you run into a problem then someone less likely has as well and will be able to explain how they resolved it.

The other advantage of a large community is that you are not constantly needing to re-invent the wheel. React Native has a plethora of third-party add-ons that we can drop into our project and streamline development without the need to code that functionality ourselves. The time, and sanity, saving benefits of being able to skip the tedious parts cannot be overstated.

About Entrance Consulting

Entrance is a full-service software consulting firm. If you would like to build a mobile app that will run on both Android and iOS, and you want to make sure that you hire a team with the experience to deliver the best product possible, please fill out the contact form on this page. One of our experts will get in touch with you right away to discuss the requirements of your project.

About Microsoft Silverlight

Silverlight is a Rich Internet Application framework developed by Microsoft. Like other RIA frameworks such as Adobe Flash, it enables software developers to create applications that have a consistent appearance and functionality across different web browsers and operating systems. Silverlight provides users with a rich experience, with built-in support for vector graphics, animation, and audio and video playback.

Although Silverlight is still a relatively new technology, it has already been used for live streaming of high-profile events such as the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 2009 Presidential Inauguration. It is also being used by major sports organizations to broadcast live content.

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migrating to office 365 using temas vs slack

Three Office 365 Trends to Pay Attention To

If you are already using Office 365, or if you are considering switching from an on-premises environment, you should pay attention to how the platform is evolving. Microsoft regularly pushes out changes (take a look at their robust Microsoft 365 product roadmap if you don’t believe me) and unless you are scanning the horizon and letting your users know about upcoming tweaks, they may be taken by surprise.

Like the famed Ship of Theseus, which had its parts replaced one by one until it was a wholly new vessel, Office 365 has set sail, bound for three major ports.

Teams is Replacing SharePoint as the O365 Collaboration Hub

Microsoft has been investing heavily in getting Teams to feature parity with rival Slack and improving integration with sundry third-party tools. If you click on the add new tab within Teams, you will see the long list of integrated services you can use.

SharePoint alone is not as effective as Teams plus SharePoint, and when you create a Team you get a SharePoint collaboration site as well as better integration and the chat client. Teams is designed to directly compete with and answer to Slack. It integrates with a wide variety of apps, including Trello and SurveyMonkey.

Teams Integrates Well With Office 365

The advantage of Teams over Slack is the full integration with Office 365. For those already heavily using Office 365 and with a business subscription, it can be useful to have built-in Skype calling integrated with Cortana. There is also a free option which is suitable for most small businesses and offers more features than Slack does to free subscribers. If you use Google Drive, however, Slack integrates much better with them. Slack also has a much stronger developer community.

Teams is limited to Microsoft’s in-house developers, while Slack’s more open approach is attracting third-party developers. This may make it hard for Microsoft to keep up. Still, it makes little sense for Office 365 subscribers to pay extra for Slack.

Given the “arms race” of features between the two, it is unlikely Slack will stay ahead for long. Although, it may do so for periods. Microsoft Teams also has stronger admin tools that allow for better control over, for example, whether memes can be sent through the chat. Choosing between the two is, in many ways, down to whether you are using Office Online or Google Drive for collaboration and cloud storage.

Teams is Also Replacing Skype For Business

Close-up Of A Businesswoman Having Video Conference In Office

Microsoft is quietly deprecating Skype for Business and pushing customers over to Teams instead. This is not a big deal as Teams is fully integrated with Skype. Microsoft themselves is touting it as an “upgrade,” although some businesses might disagree. IT managers should be aware that it is very likely they will eventually be forced to switch over. Microsoft has provided a roadmap to help you decide when to make the change. It makes sense that Microsoft would not want to run two redundant systems. Given what was mentioned above, about competing with Slack, fully integrating Skype makes sense.

Integrated video calling is one of the ways in which Teams stands above Slack, which instead has an approach of trying to help users use their third-party video calling system of choice. While some might prefer this, the integration should come over as an improvement, especially to people already using SFB. However, it will also make it hard for those currently using SFB as a standalone app.

Teams is a Better Way to Communicate

Thus, you should switch to Teams. Start preparing by setting Teams up and communicating with your employees, some of whom may need training. You also need to make sure that your hardware properly supports the Teams Skype integration. Timelines may change, and Microsoft is currently, as of January 2019, recommending that you run both systems side-by-side until all of the features are added to Teams. Overall, existing Office 365 subscribers should definitely be setting up Teams. It seems that Microsoft intends to essentially integrate everything needed for collaboration into the Teams app. This follows a general trend of integrating everything as closely together as possible. Another recent integration, for example, is that Yammer group files are now stored in SharePoint rather than separately.

SharePoint is Being Modernized

Microsoft is also putting a lot of effort into improving and modernizing SharePoint. New pages for lists and libraries have already been rolled out, as has a new look and UI for collaboration sites and page editing. This is overlaid on an improved web-part creation framework. They are also promising reorganized menus and a hub-and-spoke model for navigation and theme inheritance. Changes as of January 2019 include a selection of new web parts including a countdown timer, YouTube and code snippet (for those not familiar with SharePoint Online, a “web part” is what most CMS systems call a “widget” or “plug-in”).

Microsoft’s December announcement gives some advanced warning about future developments. Page templates have been delayed, but they are in the process of rolling out customized title regions, section background support, pinning of news articles to sort them, and personalized web parts that detect specific users and give them the right information.

SharePoint Migration Tool

In other words, using SharePoint is changing. To help employees understand the changes, training may be necessary. Microsoft is also improving the SharePoint Migration Tool to help new users move stuff over to SharePoint Online and OneDrive. This includes UI changes to make it more consistent with other Office 365 apps, the ability to start new migrations without having to restart the tool and a more streamlined settings system.

If you have been using SharePoint for a while, then you may have some decisions to make. For most businesses, the best choice is probably to upgrade your site to use modern tools, but some may find a completely new site is easier. If your site is heavily customized, then you might be better off leaving them be. Finally, in December, an improved SharePoint admin center was rolled out. It gives much better-sharing controls and a more attractive user interface, amongst other things.

For collaboration and communication, Office 365 has a great set of tools. However, IT managers who use it need to stay on top of what Microsoft’s changes. This helps make an informed decision about migrating to Office 365. further, it denotes what kind of training and internal communication you need with employees to ensure they are using the system to its full potential.

College students working on computer in classroom, young adults in further education, man concentrating as he types on keyboard

Seriously, Where Are All the Computer Idioms?

Idioms are far from uncommon throughout the technology industry. Whether you’re in software or hardware development or handle the business end of an IT company, you’re going to hear phrases such as kill two birds with one stonebells, and whistleseverything’s running ship-shape, and in Layman’s terms, just to name a few.

These expressions are shorthand for the much more complex processes going on, keeping communications between developers quick and universal. Idioms also make it far easier to communicate what developers are handling to the business side of the company. Rather than trying to explain to the CFO how you’ve optimized application’s processes to reduce the amount of stress put on the device’s CPU, for example, you could just say, “Everything’s smooth sailing after this update!”

Despite the prevalence of shorthands, idioms, and expressions in the tech industry, you hardly ever hear any technology-based idioms. You wouldn’t ever necessarily hear, “That’s like blocking two DDOS attacks with one firewall” Rather, “This firewall kills two birds with one stone” would be the knee-jerk phrasing, even between two developers. Why?

 

Seriously, Where Are All the Computer Idioms?

Before boiling down where this shortage of computer and technology-based idioms stem from, it’s imperative to wrap your head around what an idiom is. Perhaps looking into their history will spare us a clue or two.

What is an Idiom?

An idiom is a figure of speech intended to express an idea other than it’s literal meaning. For example, if someone has cold feet, their feet aren’t actually cold (well, their feet maybe, who knows – but that’s not the point of the idiom), it means they’re unsure of a decision, event, etc…

The Idioms, the largest idiom dictionary on the internet, estimates that there are over 25,000 idioms in the English language alone. Common idioms include:

  • a dime a dozen – the subject in question is common, just like any other.
  • beat around the bush – to avoid something.
  • cut me some slack – translates to “go easy on me”
  • back to the drawing board – to start all over again.
  • jump the gun – to get ahead of one’s self.
  • let it off the hook – let it go.
  • missed the boat – missed the opportunity.
  • a grey-area – something unclear.
  • a rip-off – something of much lesser value than it’s cost.
  • break a leg – good luck.
  • kill two birds with one stone – one solution solves multiple problems.
  • ship-shape or smooth sailing – everything is working intended, without issue.
  • bells and whistles – fancy upgrades.
  • wrap my head around – come to understand something.

Idioms vary from culture to culture, but they exist within every language. Idioms you may hear all around the globe include:

  • mustard after lunch – is a Polish expression to denote it’s too late.
  • not all donuts come with a hole – is an Italian idiom that refers to disrespecting someone.
  • to have dumplings instead of flowers – is a Japanese expression for picking something useful over something aesthetically pleasing.
  • a whole lot of noise and no walnuts – is the Spanish version of all bark and no bite, an expression for someone who’s all talk without ever pursuing what they say.

Some idioms are far easier to decode than others. Missed the boat, and cut me some slack are pretty self-explanatory, but mustard after lunch might take a minute or two for someone who isn’t familiar with Polish culture to wrap their head around.

Preteen girl rolls eyes as mom uses idols she doesn't understand

History of Idioms

While you could pinpoint the origins of specific idioms, it’s hard to nail down where the idea of idioms originated from. They have been so embedded and ingrained within our day-to-day language throughout societies around the world, you may as well say they’ve been around since the dawn of time.

Idioms can be traced all the way back to a time of Aesop, mid-6th century BCE. A Greek slave by the name of Aesop wrote 725 fables, which were relayed from one another with the intent to entertain and teach a moral lesson. More often than not, these fables revolved around animals or insects; foxes, grasshoppers, crabs, and stags.

In the fable The Fox and the Grapes, a fox dismisses the grapes he tried so hard to grasp as just sour grapes after being unable to reach them. Sour grapes have gone on to live outside of the fable itself as their own expression. More often than not, someone who is a sore loser may play indifferently to their shortcomings as “sour grapes”.

Although these expressions have been around for quite some time, the word idiom itself only arose sometime during 1588 in France, according to Merriam-Webster.

 

Memes and Idioms

In more recent years, memes have taken the world by storm. Similar to idioms, memes are intended to quickly represent an idea, typically with an air of humor. While a meme doesn’t necessarily have to be an idiom, many memes found themselves on sarcasm, existential humor, or exaggerations – they are not meant to be taken seriously.

Memes may also be an icon, figure, or image, such as the troll facegrumpy cat, or even popular phrases and hashtags.

The word meme itself was coined by an English ethologist and evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins. In a book he published in 1976, The Selfish Gene, Dawkins invents the word meme to express how information spreads and develops in culture.

 

Where are All the Computer Idioms?

Although idioms have been around for quite some time and they serve as the basis for memes in more recent years, there is still a serious lack of computer and technology-based idioms.

Which, unfortunately, makes sense. These expressions have been ingrained in our society for hundreds upon thousands of years, and the invention of the computer is far more recent.

According to Computer Hope, the first mechanical computer was invented in 1822 by Charles Babbage. The Z1, first programmable computer – a machine that closely resembles what we would refer to as a computer today, in contrast to Babbage’s invention – was invented by a German civil engineer by the name of Konrad Zuse.

Perhaps the explanation for the lack of technology is as simple as time.

Which leaves us to wonder… Will the computer-based idioms be the norm in future societies? Will younger generations still use and understand the colonial era expressions such as, you’ve got a screw loose, or it’s time to face the music, that we still use 300 years after their invention?

It’s definitely interesting to ponder.

 

Keep up with the latest in Software Development over on our blog. To learn more information about Entrance Consulting or schedule a software development consultation, please contact us.