Working At AIS | Applied Information Sciences Blog

A global law firm gained a planning and billed-hours edge with a new custom SharePoint application, incorporating an intelligent data dashboard, developed by the experienced team at AIS. This custom-developed solution continues a rich history of success, as the firm views AIS as their IT project partner and a long-term extension of their team.

Background

The long-time AIS client is a top law firm with household name clients in the technology, financial, healthcare and retail industries. They staff more than 1,000 lawyers and offices in 12 cities in the United States, Europe and Asia. This client offers comprehensive legal capabilities for intellectual property, tax issues, real estate, bankruptcy, environmental, corporate law and more.

The Challenge

AIS was initially brought in to build the firm’s global intranet. The project, a SharePoint intranet application, was very successful and user adoption exceeded expectations. Around the same time, the firm hired another company to build a resource application for its main legal practice areas. But because of poor user feedback and bad performance, the application never made it to production. After nearly three years of time and money spent, the firm turned to AIS for help.

Click here to read the full case study.

Rita Nordenman

I was rushing out of my house on a Thursday afternoon and my phone fell squarely onto the pavement. As I picked it up and gingerly turned it over in my hands, I gasped. The screen was cracked, utterly and completely. It was a moment so steeped in idiocy that I almost laughed at myself. If you drop a phone it breaks, right? Except that it hadn’t and I’d dropped it a million times before. Maybe this was just its time to die its little death or maybe this was a particularly horrible fall. Whatever it was, it happened and it was over.

Later, at the store, my conversation with the girl replacing my phone went a little like this:

Helpful Girl: So if you’re phone is backed up, I’ll delete everything on it and get you started with a new one.

Me: It is.

HG: Ok, is it backed up to the cloud?

Me: …

HG: (concern on her face) What did you do to back it up?

Me: My husband plugged it into the computer and made a copy.

HG: Ok, if you’re sure you have a copy…

Me: I am…?

Did I mention that I’m a Business Analyst for an IT company? That I used to recruit for that same company? That I regularly talk with customers about what we can do for them and how we can ease their pain points with technology-based solutions? If you’re rolling you’re eyes at me, that makes two of us. But as I’ve discovered, working in technology isn’t all about the technology, it’s about the people. Read More…

Vishwas Lele

Email
@vlele

It was great fun presenting at Windows AzureConf 2013. I would like to thank the entire AzureConf team (Cory Fowler and Brady Gaster in particular) and my fellow speakers for their valuable feedback.

Click here to watch the video recording of my session on channel 9.

You can find recordings to all other sessions (including Scott Guthrie’s keynote) via this link.

Many of you asked me for a copy of the code I used during my session. You can find all my code snippets and slides here. (Of course this is just sample code so please treat it as such!)

Additionally, Pluralsight has graciously offered to make my newly-released Windows Azure IaaS Course for Developers available for FREE beginning Monday, April 29 at 9:00 a.m. MDT, and keep it freely available for 48 hours (ending 9:00 a.m. MDT on Wednesday, May 1). This is a three-hour course that goes in much more detail on the Windows Azure IaaS topics:

Windows Azure IaaS Course for Developers

Please feel free to send me additional questions via my Twitter account. Thanks!

Joseph Klein

AIS is planning a second presentation of our newest SharePoint 2013 seminar in Reston, VA on May 15th. Last month’s seminar in Chevy Chase was a great, informative morning and we’re pleased to offer it again at a different DC metro area location for a wider audience. (Non-DC readers stay tuned; we plan to take this show on the road to other cities soon!)

After more than two years of early adoption research, analysis and technical readiness, AIS has determined that SharePoint 2013 has game-changing functionality as an application platform. This free half-day session will touch on all the new, compelling features of SharePoint and detail exactly how it can help you do more…with less.

Smarter Search
Simpler and Mobile-Ready UI
SharePoint App Store Model
Better Workflow
Social SharePoint
Easy Migration Tools
Lower Costs & more

AIS bloggers and team members Jason Storch and Chris Miller will be presenting and on-hand to answer any questions you have about SharePoint and how it can meet the specialized needs of your company or organization.

For more background, you can read our full SharePoint 2013 blog coverage by clicking here. We also have a short whitepaper available on The Top Reasons Your Business Will Love the New SharePoint.

Click here to register for this event. We look forward to seeing you there!

Joseph Klein

Please be our guest at the next Azure ‘n’ Action Café online session on April 10th from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. This is a jump-start overview session, including demos and best practices focusing on Windows Azure Virtual Machines: IaaS “On Your Terms.” You will experience how easy it is to bring your own customized virtual machine images — or select from a gallery and retain full control of your images — and maintain them as your business requires. You’ll also be the first to see how to provision a brand-new SharePoint 2013 farm in Azure IaaS.

The Azure ‘n’ Action Café is a series of “lunch and learn” online sessions on a variety of topics related to the Windows Azure Platform. Please register for Windows Azure Virtual Machines: IaaS “On Your Terms” by clicking on the link below and adding the meeting to your calendar from the registration page.

Click here to register to secure your seat at the Café.

AISblog

Good question. And we’ve got the answer.

Here at AIS, we’ve spent hundreds of thousands of hours envisioning, designing and constructing SharePoint-based solutions for our clients. With each new version of SharePoint, we make additional investments to deeply understand the new release’s capabilities.

We’ve taken a look at all the changes and enhancements in the latest version — and you just have to look at our blog archives to realize that a LOT has changed in 2013 — and put together a short, easy-to-read whitepaper that highlights the top new features that make SharePoint 2013 a must-have for your business, including:

Smarter Search
Simpler and Mobile-Ready UI
The game-changing SharePoint App Store Model
Better Workflow
Social SharePoint
Easy Migration Tools
Lower Costs
And much more!

Please CLICK HERE to download your free copy.

Not familiar with SharePoint as a business solution? Take a look at our SharePoint solutions on our website and contact us to learn more about how SharePoint can transform your organization.

AISblog

We’re honored to announce that AIS’ own Media Center app won an Appy award for “Coolest App” at the SharePoint MVP Summit 2013. Media Center is a SharePoint app that allows you to integrate your Windows Azure Media Services (WAMS) assets in SharePoint. And we agree that it’s pretty darn cool.

You can download the award-winning Media Center app for free from the Office store.

And here’s a brief video demo of the app’s capabilities:

Congratulations and special thanks to AIS team members Jason McNutt, Harin Sandhoo, and Sam Larko for their contributions to Media Center!

AISblog

Have you taken a look at the new SharePoint yet?

If you’ve spent any time reading our blog, you know by now that SharePoint 2013 introduces extraordinary new features to change the way you work, share, discover, organize and build sites. And now we’ve put together a quick guide highlighting the top features that may inpact your business.

Download The Top Reasons Why Your Business Will Love the New SharePoint now! (No form required,)

The Top Reasons Why Your Business Will Love the New SharePoint guide provides you with an overview of the latest and greatest that comes with SharePoint 2013, including:

Smarter Search
Simpler and Mobile-Ready UI
SharePoint App Store Model
Better Workflow
Social SharePoint…and more, including easy migration tools and lower costs.

Download your copy today!

And if you’re in the DC area, AIS is hosting an “Introduction to SharePoint 2013″ event at the Microsoft office in Chevy Chase, MD on March 20th. Click here to learn more and register.

Joseph Klein

(UPDATED! Please note the new date. We’ll be presenting this session on March 20th, at 9:30 am to noon at Microsoft’s office in Chevy Chase, MD. We hope you can join us, as it’s shaping up to be a lively and very informative event!)

Reduced budgets, economic pressures and competition require our commercial and public sector clients to accomplish more with less these days.

After more than two years of early adoption research, analysis and technical readiness, AIS has determined that SharePoint 2013 has game-changing functionality as an application platform. We leverage it because we can build great applications more quickly — and at reduced cost because we write much less code.

Most organizations own the product. But few truly leverage it as an application platform. This free half-day session will present the major new capabilities of SharePoint 2013 and how they can be used for a new generation of applications, including:

Compelling User Experience, mobile browser support and productivity enhancements to delight users and drive adoption
Enhanced collaboration / social media integration
Robust and decoupled workflow engine to address even the most complex business process automation
Ability to re-vitalize and migrate Microsoft Access applications
Improved digital dashboard capability through PowerView
Cloud integration including seamless integration with Windows Azure and Office 365
Improved e-discovery and matter management via better centralized and aggregated records management

This seminar will highlight the many reasons to aggressively migrate to SharePoint 2013 by reviewing the many new and enhanced features, while providing context and insight into the new generation of application they enable.

AIS bloggers and team members Vishwas Lele, Jason Storch and Chris Miller will be presenting. For more background, you can read our full SharePoint 2013 blog coverage by clicking here. In particular, be sure not to miss Vishwas Lele’s entry on the SharePoint App Dev Platform: The Journey So Far & the Road Ahead.

When: March 20, 2013, 9:30 am to noon
Where: Microsoft Corporation, 5404 Wisconsin Avenue, Chevy Chase MD (map)

Please click here to register for this event, or feel free to email me directly. We hope to see you there!

AISblog

Happy Friday! Here are some great posts from AIS team members‘ personal blogs…

Securing a Windows Azure endpoint…the VALID way…: “Many cool new services are being rolled out in the Windows Azure platform, but there is one feature that has been in place since Azure went live that is still very valuable to me: the ability to quickly roll-out locally developed functionality to the web using Web or Worker roles.” (bwodicka.wordpress.com)

Enable Automatic Code First Migrations On SQL Database in Azure Web Sites: “Azure is becoming increasingly easier to use – especially with features like Azure Web Sites. Being able to use Entity Framework Migrations in Azure makes deployment easier than ever.” (Steve Michelotti)

Creating an Offline Web Platform Installer for Service Bus 1.0: “Service Bus 1.0 is available only through Web Platform Installer at this time and it’s not readily apparent how you might use WPI for a network isolated environment. Hopefully this will help…” (cromwellhaus)

Netizen – Windows 8 app that makes it easy to follow congressional votes: A little extra background on our free Netizen app and why we created it. (Fleeting Thoughts)

Resources for How to Raise A Geek: “A list of tools, books, and ideas to help parents raise a geek. Raising a geek will bring you closer to your children, give them tools for the future, and you might learn something along the way.” (Steven Suing’s Blog)

AIS is hiring! Come join our team of smart, passionate innovators. View all current job openings here.