K2 Case Study
Web Site: www.k2.com
Country or Region: United States
Industry: Information Technology
Customer Profile
K2 provides a software platform for delivering process-driven applications that improve business efficiency. Visual tools make it easy to assemble reusable objects into applications that use workflow and line-of-business information. K2-based solutions are deployed by a growing number of the global Fortune 100. K2 is a division of SourceCode Technology Holdings, Inc. with offices all over the world.
PreEmptive Software and Services
- Runtime Intelligence Services
- Dotfuscator® Professional
- Instrumentation Platform
Microsoft Components
- Visual Studio 2008
- Microsoft Windows Server
- Microsoft SQL Server: Database Engine, Analysis Services, Reporting Services, Integration Services, Microsoft MQ (MSMQ)
- Microsoft .NET 3.5 with ASP.NET Ajax
- Microsoft Active Directory
"With the release of our K2 blackpoint software, PreEmptive Solutions Runtime Intelligence Service has had a significant impact on our ability to collect feedback from customers throughout our beta cycles. That helps us to focus our product planning, development, and QA resources on shipping only the very best software possible." – Adriaan van Wyk, CEO, K2
K2's software empowers organizations to assemble process-driven applications that improve business efficiency. For K2, sustaining a competitive advantage means hitting the market with the next "new thing" at precisely the right time. K2 must maintain a delicate balance between continuous improvement and delivering entirely new capabilities that transform client processes and operations. Runtime Intelligence Services provides K2 with unequaled visibility into adoption and user behavior -- all with no programming or impact to its release schedule.
Business Needs
K2 uses the standard software channels for 'feedback' during beta programs -- email requests, feature and bug tracking via the ticket system, forums postings, phone calls, etc. The information from these avenues is valuable, but typically only 10 percent of participants ever respond. Further, the quality of the responses are also in question because these methods require the participant to stop what they are doing and think about how to capture their scenario and organize their feedback.
Solution
K2 is using Runtime Intelligence Services to track game changing features during its beta programs. This gives K2 insight into customer adoption rates and usage patterns.
"We not only know that a feature is being used, but also how long typical tasks take to complete and the overall stability of our software. These are insights that we typically only received from a few active beta participants. Now we get this information from every single person who downloads our software -- this is incredible," said Anthony Petro, Technical Product Manager, K2.
K2 blackpoint
Now in beta, K2 blackpoint software is for SharePoint users who want visual tools to build workflows and process-driven applications quickly — without code, without complexity.
K2 blackpoint has a powerful Office-style designer (K2 Studio) and a Silverlight-based K2 Web Designer that provides profound simplicity. Non-developers and business users can use K2 blackpoint to create new SharePoint workflows that span libraries, sites, InfoPath forms, server farms, and organizations; manage approvals; and route documents and list items. With K2 blackpoint, everything is visual and wizard-driven, everything can be built without code, and users can assemble new applications from information that already exists.
Runtime Intelligence Service Implementation
K2 installed and configured Dotfuscator Professional in order to instrument application analytics post-build, i.e. to inject the tracking and communication logic into the compiled K2 blackpoint beta assemblies.
"Dotfuscator installation and usage is very straight forward. The Runtime Intelligence module was easy to configure and implement in our product. Honestly, we were very skeptical of PreEmptive's claims that we could inject this functionality without ANY changes to our current code base. We use the .NET Framework extensively, including reflection and we were certain that this would cause issues with Dotfuscator. In fact, their claim of no programming was 100 percent true. We haven't run into any issues using this product. It simply works," continued Petro.
"Once we understood what settings we needed for Dotfuscator to hook into our application, we were easily able to make this product part of our build process. The ability to literally 'bolt on' the Runtime Intelligence after the main assemblies have been built allows us to just run the tool on our build server. Dotfuscator now simply becomes another part of the build process, and Runtime Intelligence is added to final assemblies before the applications installers are built. This ensures we never miss a beat for capturing data with every build," continued Petro.
"It was extremely simple to use from a development point of view. It extended virtually in a matter of minutes onto our build process. Once the initial setup is done, there is virtually zero effort in getting our assemblies to release phase. This made me very happy as a developer and builder. With our tight time frames and deadlines, there was virtually zero hassle with Dotfuscator. Changes that I wanted to do were very easy and simple," said Jan Joubert – Component Owner, K2 Studio.
Benefits
K2 blackpoint beta was downloaded by more than 500 clients.
"We started working with Preemptive Solutions because we were interested in the Runtime Intelligence features of the product. The idea of gathering runtime intelligence around application usage without having to implement code was very intriguing. Sure enough, within 30 minutes of installation, we were up and running and sending intelligence data to the PreEmptive service," continued Joubert.
"This quick turnaround allowed us to get executive buy-in on the idea of runtime intelligence very quickly. Once we had executive sponsorship, a few more 30-minute sessions later and we had the full-featured data capture to gain the insights we needed; a truly phenomenal experience.
We now know how many people have run our application, where our users spend most of their time inside the application, and if there are any crashes that need to be resolved before RTM.
With K2 blackpoint betas, we are finding that our new approach to self-learning in the product, called Process Guides, is exactly what our customers need to become K2 experts without the need for training or support calls. We now have valuable confirmation that this was an important development investment. We will continue to drive R&D in this area throughout our product stack," concludes Petro.
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