Digital transformation is enabled by efficiently delivering workflow and productivity tools to both employees and customers. For most office workers these tools need to run on both PCs and mobile devices. For employees who don’t work in glass offices, tools will almost exclusively be accessed on smart phones or tablets. These workers expect polished mobile productivity tools similar to consumer apps like Uber.
Enterprises face several challenges in delivering these workflow and productivity tools. Typically multiple dev teams are involved since each endpoint device (web, native iOS, native android, Windows) requires a different development stack and ecosystem of development tools. Further complexity comes from developer specialization around technologies like big data, AI, databases, visualization, UX, and VR, and from the need to securely connect to existing enterprise systems.
It is ironic that digital transformation, which is central to maintaining competitiveness in today’s environment, is still dependent on the complex and bespoke production of software using a process that in many ways resembles a 19th century workshop. Processes are not highly automated and standardized. There are literally hundreds of different development tools being used. Developers write code line-by-line. Development teams are often spread across offices around the world, but the work process is typically siloed and sequential. Testing and QA of these hand-crafted software products consume vast resources. The multi-billion dollar DevOps exists primarily to manage this complexity.
Umajin enables solutions to be built using a fundamentally more efficient process. It has been built over the past 15 years through extensive custom development of licensed technology for Intel, Dell, HP, and DreamWorks. The platform contains more than 70 key computer science innovations and has been explicitly designed to support a much less complex and faster development process. The Umajin Application System is a platform for designing, developing and deploying applications with consistent rich visual experiences across all devices, whether native mobile, PC, or web based. Umajin provides proven and scalable capability to connect data, media, and IT services across organizational boundaries to all endpoint devices, with a consistent experience for the end user irrespective of device used. The runtime system is designed both to be extremely power efficient and to automatically configure at runtime to utilize available performance and hardware resources on each device.
At its core, Umajin uses a unique declarative language, designed to be orders of magnitude more efficient than low level languages like C++ in code size and high level languages like HTML in terms of code performance. The system uses AI to automate many typically tedious coding tasks as dynamic systems which operate at run time. The language is not directly accessible—it is presented to users through the visual editor and Javascript extensions. This allows designers working with lines of business to own and create elegant solutions quickly without code. Developers can implement custom modules and connectors using Javascript, and make them available in the library of the visual editor. The platform provides a collaborative visual editor that improves the organizational process of how designers, business teams, and developers interact to deliver high quality workflow and productivity tools. Deployment times can be shortened by 90% or more, whether for a simple business workflow application or for the display of scenarios in virtual reality built on enterprise data from multiple systems.
Umajin supports client and server development, design, coding, debugging, testing, task management, feedback, version management, updating, content management, security, deployment, and application analytics.
Visual Studio Code Live is integrated with fully interactive debugging inside the Umajin editor. Applications can be published simultaneously across iOS devices, Android devices, Windows, and the web.
It provides a fully integrated multi user design, development, and deployment environment, greatly reducing the requirement for additional dev ops tools.
The Goal Directed Development process has the benefit that with proper quality and security testing during the development of any custom feeds, actions and components only require a process security audit and functional testing for the final solutions.
This is possible because the declared goals are statically checked before execution, and at runtime functional contracts are used to ensure discrete and accurate execution. The runtime cannot enter unchecked states and all code executed is pre tested by Umajin.
Umajin’s engine and runtime incorporates many elements of game engine technology to support the “multi-experience” user interface, allowing it to efficiently incorporate 3D animation, voice recognition, and AR/VR into enterprise applications.
Like a game engine it includes a rendering engine for 2D and 3D graphics, a physics engine, voice recognition, scripting, animation, artificial intelligence, networking, streaming, memory management, threading, localization, and a scene graph.
Unlike typical game engines, the experience engine creates a much more flexible development environment and is designed for low power operations on mobile devices. Umajin can run compelling 3D or VR application on a mobile phone without issues of thermal management or shortened battery life.
The library of Umajin drag-and-drop components and actions are designed to cover 80 or 90% of most requirements, but sometimes it’s necessary to access a bespoke internal system or provide a unique piece of user interaction. For these customizations Umajin supports both a Javascript and native code layer.
This is used by developers to create reusable and shareable modules for new actions, data feeds or components. Fully extensible cloud API’s and a very deep client technology stack makes it possible to leverage existing third party building blocks for UX, digital agents, IOT, machine vision, charts, video, 3D and more.
The visual editor allows members of the business team, the system integrator project team, and third party developers to work together from multiple locations to build digital transformation processes and applications.
Everyone can see and contribute to application as it is being built. The visual editor is intuitive for anyone with experience with Adobe Creative Suite.
The Umajin Design Led Agile process changes how business teams, consultants, and developers work together to create new applications. Design thinking from the business team drives the process, and sprints can create working prototypes in hours.
Developers can focus on creating high value (and reusable) customizations rather than rote coding of basic functionality.
Focused sprint cycles, ultra-clear communication on requirements and integrated support for security requirements enables the team to focus on innovation and delighting the customer