The document discusses the limitations of traditional software development methods, including bugs, time consumption, and failure to apply lessons learned. It introduces Encanvas' Applications Fabric as a codeless cloud service that allows for faster, lower risk application development. This addresses the need for organizations to develop applications quickly to support digital transformation and leverage disparate data sources. The Applications Fabric uses Computer Aided Application Development (CAAD) methods that involve designing applications using pre-formed building blocks rather than coding, reducing risks, costs and development times.

1. Encanvas
Applications Fabric
An Executive Briefing
Coding is a manual task. When humans code applications they engineer in
the bugs that cause them to perform sub-optimally. It’s also time consuming.
And humans don’t always apply what they learn. A better solution would be
to have a robot build perfect applications. But we’re not there yet.
A level of trial and error can be expected for any creative activity but the
excessive risks of software authoring are born out in studies both in terms of
slow time to market and burgeoning costs. The article ‘Why Your IT Project
May Be Riskier Than You Think’ by HBR (November 2011) followed a survey of
1,471 IT projects with an average spend of $167m and found:
 The average overrun was 27%
 One in six projects studied experienced a cost overrun of over 200%.
 Almost 70% of black swan projects also overrun their schedules.
While the pitfalls of coded software developments are well documented, the
IT industry has been unable to overcome them. With digital organizations
now seeking to lever business advantage from disparate sources of data, the
need to reliably produce applications right-first-time has never been greater.
For organizations wishing to move ahead with their digital transformation
plans adopting codeless design, Encanvas’ Applications Fabric is delivered
as a cloud service so there’s no need to install IT on-site.
This guide examines the demand, methods and tools behind adoption of
agile software tools.
Why codeless software design
makes good business sense
SERVING INFORMATION TO
CURIOUS MINDS – How
organizations are employing
Services Oriented
Architectures to cut IT costs
In this guide
CAAD – A fresh approach to
applications authoring that
keeps up with business
transformation and de-risks
software development
3
5
REMOTE[SPACES] – How
Encanvas turns the cloud into
a place to innovate
6

2. 2 An Introduction to Encanvas Application Fabric and CAAD Software Development Methods
“Institutionally, the
ability to be agile
enough is the gut
issue in leading an
organization
today.”
James McNearney - CEO, Boeing
Leaders are coming to
realize the pivotal role
digital technology can
have to deliver value to
customers.
For a hundred years
management thinking has
valued mechanization
over creativity…
..but after decades of automation,
the core business processes of
organizations are pretty slick – that
is until markets change and
business models need to realign.
Then concepts of operational
excellence evangelized by
management consultants sound
hollow. As the very structure of
markets change, smaller, more
nimble companies benefitting from
closer ties to their customers, and a
clearer understanding of their
value, are able to steal a march on
vendors 100 times their size. Even
global brands aren’t safe - new
aggressors can emerge from a
different industry altogether to take
a big bite out of a market they see
as fair game in an open, global
market-place (such as retailers
venturing into the car insurance
market for example).
Organizations that could once
survive without reviewing business
models more than once a decade
are now forced to re-assess annually.
The new mantra of business
excellence is agility – to create an
enterprise that can adapt to always
win in its most addressable markets.
Key to the drive for agility is the need
to empower middle managers;
people with the energy, skills and
curiosity to question why processes
work as they do and find new ways
to distil customer value. Leaders are
coming to realize that leadership at
all levels of the enterprise is vital. This
critical tier of ‘corporals’ demand
systems and tools to understand and
adapt their assets and resources to fit
internal processes to the ever
changing business landscape. This is
driving demand for a new tier of
applications that harvest data from
existing sources to create new
applications that response to new
situations (‘situational applications’)
as they arise and align IT systems to
better fit constantly evolving
processes.
Nick Lawrie
CEO, NDMC Consulting

3. 3 An Introduction to Encanvas Application Fabric and CAAD Software Development Methods
“Middle managers
spend more than a
quarter of their time
searching for
information
necessary to their
jobs, and when they
do find it, it is often
wrong.”
AIMS survey on information
management, 2007
Disparate silos of data across the enterprise - a known problem that has
faced organizations for decades, but how do you fix it?
Services-Oriented Architecture is a term that describes the design and use
of information services to support business needs; a coherent enterprise-
wide method of organizing how computer systems present information to
other systems so the data they manage can be accessed more easily
without compromising systems performance or security. For business
people, the major benefit of organizing information through SOA is the
prospect that data held in disparate silos across the enterprise can be re-
used to create new applications that produce smarter processes.
To consume Web Services requires applications able to bring data
together while fashioning new data structures, web portals and forms-
based applications to view, edit and update data. Demand for these new
applications increasingly comes from communities of workers that, while
small in number, are essential to process innovation and creativity – things
that create competitive advantage in the 21st century business world. The
conceived wisdom of building large lumbering enterprise applications for
the majority at the expense of the few, no longer fits the reality of what
these critical communities of information workers either need or expect.
The high quality of software people now use in their homes and on their
mobile phones has raised the bar of what business users expect. The digital
native generation dismisses applications that require a manual or that ask
them to live with inhospitable reporting tools.
Releasing the
true potential
of curious
minds.
Andrew Lawrie
CTO, Encanvas

4. 4 An Introduction to Encanvas Application Fabric and CAAD Software Development Methods
Encanvas releases corporate
information assets so that curious
minds can lever business
advantage - without the risks
and costs associated with
traditional business intelligence
tooling.
Disparate silos of data across the enterprise - a
known problem that has faced organizations for
decades, but how do you fix it?
Services-Oriented Architecture is a term that describes the design and
use of information services to support business needs; a coherent
enterprise-wide method of organizing how computer systems present
information to other systems so the data they manage can be accessed
more easily without compromising systems performance or security. For
business people, the major benefit of organizing information through
SOA is the prospect that data held in disparate silos across the enterprise
can be re-used to create new applications that produce smarter
processes.
To consume Web Services requires applications able to bring data
together while fashioning new data structures, web portals and forms-
based applications to view, edit and update data. But how do
organization produce this myriad of applications affordably?
Demand for these new applications increasingly comes from
communities of workers that, while small in number, are essential to
process innovation and creativity – things that create competitive
advantage in the 21st century business world. The conceived wisdom
of building large lumbering enterprise applications for the majority at the
expense of the few, no longer fits the reality of what these critical
communities of information workers either need or expect.
The high quality of consumer software people now use in their homes
and on their mobile phones has raised the bar of what business users
expect. The digital native generation dismisses applications that require
a manual or that ask them to live with inhospitable reporting tools.
To meet the demands of this new consumerized user community, the
only viable solution is to produce applications at a faster pace and at
lower cost and risk.
This demand has led to the innovations found in the Encanvas code-less
cloud platform.

5. 5 An Introduction to Encanvas Application Fabric and CAAD Software Development Methods
Computer Aided Applications
Development (CAAD) is a rapid code-
less method of designing and deploying
situational applications for workgroups
and teams.
CAAD Project Phases and Stages
Tom Adams
Project Consultant
Applications Development Methods
Creating better software applications faster, at lower
risk and cost
Computer Aided Applications Development (CAAD) is a rapid method
of designing and deploying situational applications for workgroups and
teams. It’s computer-aided because applications are authored using a
platform that supplies pre-formed building blocks of technology,
negating the need for the majority of coding, testing and re-working
associated with former methods of software authoring.
The ability to develop applications in near real-time (largely during
workshops with users and stakeholders) not only makes applications
‘better-fit’ to the community of users and beneficiaries they’re intended
for, but reduces the time, cost and risk of applications developments –
all but removing testing, tuning and re-working costs. CAAD methods
and tools dramatically reduce the skills-portfolio needed for authoring
applications which means that one individual can reasonably discharge
the entire lifecycle.
The fact that applications are authored ‘faster’ does not remove the
need for quality gates or pre-qualification of the use-case, user needs
and benefactor outcome expectations. Developments are by necessity
heavily pre-scoped using formalized analysis methods comprised of:
 Outcome Driven Innovation (ODI) based User Role, purpose
and job worth analysis
 Value Innovation based strategic value analysis
 RPRS based applications attribute analysis

6. “Many CEOs today want a vibrant,
creative workplace that attracts
and retains the best talent.”
Jenny Turner – CEO Ling Turner Talent
Management
Creative clouds
Perhaps the most game changing
associated technologies made
possible by Rich Internet portals is
CLOUD COMPUTING.
The term ‘cloud’ is a metaphor for
the Internet and describes a multi-
tenant computing model where
users access their preferred
portfolio of information services
from anywhere, through any
device with an Internet browser.
Cloud technologies include:
1. The virtualized hardware
and operating systems
2. Platform administration
systems
3. Application design and
deployment systems
Cloud computing enables the
outsourcing of hosting hardware,
operating systems and data
storage platforms required to
support business applications. It
means organizations can all but
remove investments in IT
infrastructure, cut IT support
overheads and reduce energy
consumption.
It’s likely most applications required
by your business will operate in
future on a SECURE cloud. The
‘cloud-space’ may ultimately be
the place where you and your
colleagues will share ideas,
innovate, enter data and consume
information services.
ENCANVAS has developed
Remote[Spaces], a unique
containerized approach to
creating, replicating and operating
public and private cloud spaces
from a desktop administrative
cock-pit. It means desktop PCs
and laptops can securely maintain
remote cloud spaces through an
intuitive control panel.
Encanvas
Dove Cottage Offices
Abingdon Road
Marcham
Oxfordshire
OX13 6NU
United Kingdom
t. +44 (0) 1865 392150
e. info@encanvas.com