Innovation

Our recent WWDC 19 event showed how innovative our customers can be. They push us hard so they can lead in their industries.

Some examples of this are: police writing arrest reports on the beat, florists taking and delivering orders and winemakers optimising harvests with sensors and robots – all from mobile phones and all with Genero.

I was impressed and gratified to see these and other demonstrations of how Genero supports our every day lives.

Challenges

We have a handful of these customers around the world – able to push the technology envelope to its limit. Not all our customers benefit from the depth and breadth of these engineering talents, however. Many have their noses to the grindstone, under-resourced and trying their best to keep up with their customer’s functional needs. When are they going to implement RESTful services, upgrade to GBC, v3.20, or implement multiple dialogs? Probably never, no time!

How do we get everyone on the same page?

After having witnessed these challenges first-hand, I see the only solution as doing this work ourselves. As a result, I am in the process of creating a professional services team to help customers ‘get the best out of Genero’. We need to take our destiny into our own hands.

Example

An excellent example of this phenomenon emerged just recently.

One of our customers, an international household name, is forcing growth with aggressive overseas investments. Its 15-strong development team cannot keep up with internal requests from its superiors to support this rapid expansion. Advertisements for new developers go unanswered, and consequently, the list of things to do gets longer and longer. Consequently, it is reviewing ‘buy-in’ options for a ‘quick fix’. That is, to replace a component of their front-office application written in Genero. Genero could easily do the job, but without the necessary resources, there is no one to do it.

We need to intervene and provide extra muscle. In this particular case, it won’t be easy to halt the process, but we must tell our story to upper management; we are significantly more cost-effective, timely and with no risk.

It is for reasons such as these that professional services are essential to our future. It further diversifies our revenues into service delivery along with Genero Cloud and provides us with incremental revenues.

Bryn Jenkins

The Team

The Professional Services team is composed of eighteen people, two based in the USA, the rest in Chennai, India.

Jogeswar Mallick
WW VP Professional Services. Irving, USA
jsm@4js.com

Jogeswar has over 16 years of experience in the software industry with leading companies such as Microsoft and more recently as an entrepreneur. He created I2GEN specialised in the delivery of development services to the Informix community, working with such Four Js customers as Superion, PowerSchool, FDBS, Solid Waste Authority and Active Day.

It is Jogeswar’s role to lead the group and develop the Professional Services business worldwide.

Mike Folcher
WW Director, Professional Services Delivery. Bethlehem, USA
mifo@4js.com

Mike has worked with Genero and Informix 4GL for over 16 years, acquiring an in-depth knowledge of BDL along the way. He managed a team of developers for six years at Sungard Public Sector/Powerschool, where he helped drive the development and shape the architecture of their finance and education ERP systems. During his tenure at Powerschool, he migrated their ERP to a multi-tenant Cloud service with a single-tenant database.

Mike’s role is to ensure customer expectations are met by scoping customer requirements, defining them in a Statement of Work and delivering the project on time and within budget.

Prashanth Venugopalan
Regional Director, Indian Services Team. Chennai, India
prve@4js.com

Prasanth has over 16 years’ experience in the software IT industry spanning: consulting, delivery, development, migration services, infrastructure management, and processes. He has broad experience across multiple client types and numerous industry domains. Other experience includes systems analysis, defect analysis, database administrator, systems administrator, performance tuning of large databases, defect analysis, UAT and production support.

Prashanth’s role is to assist with scoping projects, as well as developing and managing the Indian services team.

Punitha Sridhar
Senior Project Manager, Indian Services Team. Chennai, India
pusr@4js.com

Punitha has over 18 years’ experience in the IT industry. She has expertise in the modernisation of legacy Informix 4GL applications using Genero. Her other experience includes driving software development teams in the Finance industry to deliver complex branch management solutions and payment gateways.

Punitha’s role is to manage projects with the Indian services team.

Rajesh Kanna
Senior Project Manager, Indian Services Team. Chennai, India
raka@4js.com

P. Rahesh Kanna has over 17 years of experience in the IT industry with experience in Linux OS Installation and configuration, Informix database administration, application development with Informix 4GL, Genero and Informix IDS. Rajesh also has an in-depth knowledge of QA.

Rajesh’s role is to manage projects with the Indian services team.

Jogeswar, Mike, Prashanth, Punitha and Rajesh work alongside 13 developers based in Chennai. As our business grows, so the team will grow, favouring the development in regions where there is the highest demand.