Pier had the opportunity to do an O'Reilly-sponsored Ignite presentation at this year's Adobe MAX conference in Chicago. The presentation focused around our experiences developing applications using pre-release versions of Flex and AIR (a new integrated runtime for deploying applications built with web technologies to the desktop). During that presentation (which was done by one of my partners, Mike Colombo), we quickly hit on several issues that we had to deal with ranging from making the business case for our technology choices, designing and producing the interfaces and building the applications.

What the presentation perhaps did not hit on was the fact that what started out as one application for Honeywell turned into a platform that now supports several desktop clients for a growing customer list that now includes Avaya, Seagate, Oswald, Kryptic and of course, Honeywell. Each of these customers has at least one custom-branded implementation of what we call Business Value Calculators.

Given the format of Ignite presentations (5 minutes, 20 slides), I thought our blog would serve as the perfect place to continue the story of what has become a fast-growing business unit of Pier. Over the next several weeks, I would like to invite you to follow along as I and the other members of the Pier development team elaborate on the process of building this Business Value Platform.

Johnny Boursiquot

Lead Developer