What makes inFORM Decisions’ products stand out from others?


Many clients have asked me: ’Why should we choose your company instead of other providers?’ I did not hesitate to answer: ‘It’s our unique core values!’. Our products are carefully crafted to provide the most innovative, automated solution in the industry. They’re designed to allow businesses to solve even their most complex process problems. Our core values support this vision, reflect on the company values and insure that our products are of the highest quality
Below are 4 core values that inFORM Decisions constantly develops and refines:
1.      Accountability
Each member of the IFD team is willing to be responsible for their output and the outcome. There are no making excuses, fingering pointing and failing to hold each other accountable. It’s our goal to assume responsibility for each product and software we provide. At inFORM Decisions, what you see is what you get.  We never have to embellish the truth of what our software is capable of. When we promise automatic classification, extraction and processing, you can count on the software to deliver.
2.      Quality
Quality assurance is prioritized to satisfy all customers, and we do whatever is necessary to fulfill our promise and go that extra mile for our customers. We have always been committed to offering our clients exceptional products with the highest standards.  Also, we deliver the promise of a paperless office by providing solutions that control runaway forms and documents and get document workflow streamlined and cost effective. If there is any problem with our products, we will take it seriously and do our best to make it right through extra effort. Strict quality control and testing ensures that products you are utilizing are the best ones that we can bring to you.
3.      Integrity
Here integrity applies to the whole of our business; both our team and our products. That integrity is dedicated to upholding ethical principles in all situations. The key component is to have team members who are of integrity. At IFD, we expect nothing but the highest ethical standards from our team, and the integrity of our business reflects that. For a product to have integrity, it must be cohesive, reliable and technically sound. Our team is wholeheartedly dedicated to ensuring the integrity of our products.
4.      Constant improvement
With each implementation we learn more about how to improve your experience. Our developers have open minds. They truly understand customer needs and take all suggestions, propositions and critiques seriously. We do not hesitate to make modifications or corrections if these changes are good for all users.  If we are missing a feature you require, we will soon develop and improve our software in order to meet your requirements. When we do make enhancements or improvements, they are available to our entire customer base.
If you are currently an IFD partner or customer, thank you for putting your trust and supporting us. If you are looking for a provider that will go extra mile for you, contact us today!


Life Fitness announces an open platform product called LFopen™


With the aim of providing customer with the best workout experience, Life Fitness decided to open its code, also known as API (Application Programming Interface).


In this strategy, they introduced LFopen™, an open platform product. It allows outside developers to access to future Life Fitness equipment software codes and customize applications. For this reason, developers have a lot of chances to create apps while exercisers also have a ton of possibilities to enjoy thousands of apps to personalize their workout experience instead of one application. 




What is more, for gym owners, they can integrate their branded solutions into Life Fitness equipments such as tracking apps and incentive programs so that gym members can update content in an effort to improve their workout experiences.

Visit the site to get further information about this open platform product.

Source: lifefitness



Jumpy - An open platform smartwatch for kids

With the aim of bring a wonderful smart watch experience to kids with added peace of mind for parents, Joray Tech has announced Jumpy, a cool smart watch for kids. It offers edutainment to their wrists and encourages parent-child interaction. 



According to Founder and CEO Jerry Chang, providing an open SDK and releasing new apps by JoyRay and third-party developers every month is the key to creating a kids’ smartwatch. 

Although kid wearables have a lot of options but a few products gain interest. While Jumpy is an innovative and multi-functional smart watch for kids of age 5 to 8. It is compatible with Android and iOS and interacts with other Jumpy devices. This is wonderful for siblings. 


With Jumpy, parents can feed in daily reminders and messages to make education a fun activity for kids. In addition, Jumpy’s watch head can interact with other devices. At present, this smart watch is on Kickstarter and reportedly shipped in March.

Source: crybytes


Docker – an open platform for distributed applications for sysadmins and developers

How to define Docker?

Docker is an open platform for developers and sysadmins to build, ship, and run any application anywhere. It include a portable, lightweight runtime and packaging tool called Docker Engine and a cloud service for sharing applications and automating workflows called Docker Hub. 



Docker lets you to assemble quickly apps from components and eliminate the friction between development, QA, and production environments. 


What benefits do developers receive when using Docker?


Docker lets developers build any app in any language using any toolchain. The app is completely portable and can run anywhere. By starting with one of the 13,000+ apps available on Docker Hub, developers can get going quickly. Docker Hub also allows developers to automate their build pipeline and share artifacts with collaborators through public or private repositories.

With Docker, developers can build and ship higher-quality applications faster.


What benefits do sysadmins receive when using Docker?


With Docker, sysadmins can provide standardized environments for their development, QA, and production teams and eliminate differences in OS distributions and underlying infrastructure. Due to standardizing on the Docker Engine, sysadmins are given flexibility in where workloads run. Importantly, with Docker sysadmins can deploy and run any app on anywhere, reliably and quickly.


Source: docker



Which Computing Platforms Are Not Open?

While a lot of open platforms are popular, closed platforms have increased for few years. But do you distinguish open platforms and closed platforms? Continue to read this article to know which computing platforms are not open.

padlock

Windows Modern

windows pc and windows phone

Normally, we can only install Modern software from the Windows Store. If an application is banned from Microsoft, it will be removed from the Windows Store. This means that we cannot install or run this application on our system. 

Apple iOS

iphones ipods and ipad

This closed platform is extremely famous. iOS users can only applications from Apple Store. If an application is violates any guidelines of Apple, Apple will remove it. 

Windows Phone

lumia-920

Windows Phone is not an open platform. Thus, you only install apps from the Windows Phone Store. 

Popular Game Consoles

xbox-playstation-and-wii

Popular game consoles have been not open platforms for a long time. They requires to be licensed before running on the console.

Source: howtogeek

Which Computing Platforms Are Open?

It is a fact that many popular platforms are still open platforms while closed platforms have increased for few years. But which computing platforms are open? Continue to read this article. 

Apple Mac OS X

macbook

This computing platform is open. Its store has various restrictions on developers and subjects their apps to sandboxing. However, developers can leave it and deliver their products directly to users. Additionally, users can disable a setting restricting to install apps from outside the store. 

Linux & Google Chrome OS


You can install anything you want on Linux and chrome OS which is a platform based on Linux. You can tog on developer mode and install other software alongside your Chrome OS system. What is more, users still can install apps and extensions from outside the store though Chrome can only install web apps and extensions from the Chrome Web Store by default. 

Google Android

Google Android is an open platform. As you are aware, you only can install software from Google Play by default but there is still a way to install Android apps from outside the store.

Amazon Kindle Fire

image

Due to being based on an Android, Amazon Kindle Fire is also offers the same freedom. It means users can install apps from outside Amazon’s Appstore.

BlackBerry

blackberry-z10

You can install apps from outside BlackBerry’s app store when using BlackBerry devices. 

In fact, these open platforms offer the freedom to decide what runs without becoming criminals because a open platform lets developers to easily distribute their software directly to users.

Source: howtogeek

Why should we use an open platform?

As you are aware, an open platform is a fairly new concept that has become famous for IT experts for years mainly because open platform software is free to use. Open platforms are indeed useful when they have a lot of advantages. Let’s discover these benefits to explain why we should use an open platform.



Firstly, open platforms provide free open platform software. It can be free to use, distribute, and modify. Open platform software has lower costs. In most cases this is only a fraction of the cost of their proprietary counterparts.

Additionally, open platform products are more secured since codes are accessible to everyone. Anyone can fix bugs when they are found. Therefore, you do not have to wait for the next releases. In fact, codes are continuously analyzed by a large community to produce secure and stable ones.

Open platforms are independent on any company or any author that originally created them. Even if companies fail, codes continue to exist and be developed by their users. 

What is more, open platforms use open standards accessible to everyone. For this reason, they do not have the problem of incompatible formats that exist in proprietary software.

Last but not least, companies using open platform products do not have to think about complex licensing models and do not need anti-piracy measures.

Source: cloudtweaks


Why is an open platform good for business?


Image you are using expensive software of a company. The company is famous and has a lot of customers because expensive software is safe.

But one day, the company is out of business. All of its customers are stuck with software that is no longer updated or supported. It is all proprietary software built on closed platforms and no one could support or improve it. Then, it is completely out of date. You are one of those unlucky customers.

Here is a lesson here that you should choose a product operating on a flexible and open platform. Why?

Here are 4 reasons why choosing a product with an open platform is critical:

1. If the company is out of business, the product is not out of date.

A product built on a closed, proprietary platform is dead if the vendor goes out of business. Nobody could maintain it. However, a product built on an open platform is still supported by a large user community even if the vendor goes under.

2. Customization options.

An open platform product is easily customized to fit your business needs while a closed, proprietary product is customized only by the vendor. It means that you have many options when customizing an open platform product.

3. Integrates well with your current product.

An open platform product work well with your current product and systems. You know what this means? You don’t have to type the same information into different systems.

4. Works well with each other.

An open platform product works well with other open platform product.

When you buy a closed, proprietary product, you depend on the vendor. You are stuck with unsupported products if the vendor goes out of business. On the other hand, an open platform product doesn’t tie you to any one vendor and works well with others. It means that it puts you in charge of your own future.

Why can open platforms beat proprietary platforms?

Do open platforms bring benefits?

Of course, they are useful. However, can open platforms beat proprietary platforms? 


In fact, It is thought that open platforms are considered as an enigma in the business world. We have a question why a business stakeholder cares about what technology is used as long as it solves a business problem and effective. This seems like it wouldn't matter but there are a lot of hidden factors that play here. Open platforms can beat proprietary platforms for the following reasons. 

Flexibility:

Proprietary platforms traditionally do not allow users to extend and integrate with other platforms easily while open platforms do. In fact, proprietary platforms have been around since computing appeared. Thus, a lot of organizations have no experience or are locked in with open platforms. 

Cost:

As you are aware open platforms are free while implementing and/or migrating to open platforms can cost more expensively than proprietary platforms. But typically costs involved with implementing open platforms are associated only with the short term. Costs including vendor lock-in, maintenance and services fees which can equate to hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars annually are eliminated when open platforms are using in the long term. 

Business Alignment:

Business alignment is critical to the future of IT. In fact, a specific need is solved by most open platform methodologies while business needs are solved by a lot of proprietary platforms. They often require many months to years to implement because they are big and bulky. While open platforms have short implementation cycles, which provides business agility and immediate return on investment to the business.

Source: chicagonow



iDocs Open -Open Platform Document Management for Unix, Windows, Linux and the Cloud



What is iDocs Open?

iDocs Open is a Open Platform Document Management tool provided by inFORM Decisions has experienced paperless technology for years. 

iDocs Open has the ability to capture and process print or database output from open platform servers on the market, and merge it with a designed graphical form and/or with a lot of graphic objects such as signatures, pictures, logos, and barcodes.

iDocs Open includes an automated merge engine, a built in forms designer, print or spool data mapping tool, an ability to capture data from almost any source and conditional processing and output specifications that can be defined by users.

When a form is designed, mapped, defined for output and routing specifications, the processor is enabled and this open platform document management tool runs in the background invisible to users running in their accounting or ERP accounting system.

Below are main features of iDocs Open. 
  • Intercept print or spool data output from multiple server platforms for processing 
  • Distribute output through a number of mechanisms such as email, fax and import into workflow and document routing options 
  • Distribute merge results to predefined locations such as Output Queue andWindows printer drivers 
  • Define multiple conditions for bursting, routing, sorting and distributing jobs 
  • User defined batch merge engine can process multiple output from multiple platforms