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About Relativity Technologies
Relativity Technologies is the leading provider of Enterprise Application Modernization and Application Portfolio Management solutions. Their industry-leading platform generates rich insight into the structure and behavior of existing applications across diverse environments-from COBOL to Java. With new insights into their applications, users can collaborate to identify, prioritize, and execute development activities that align their applications with business goals.
Relativity's Modernization
Workbench
Relativity Technologies Modernization Workbench analyzes the structure and function of enterprise application portfolios. When contextualized, these insights provide a business perspective on software assets. The Modernization Workbench offers many paths to getting insight into applications. One such feature is a proprietary visualization engine that is built into the Modernization Workbench as a presentation layer. This allows users to analyze the complex interdependencies between software assets. Customers can use this information to make more informed development decisions and to transfer application knowledge between team members.
Relativity's Challenge
For over ten years, the Modernization Workbench technology has evolved to support market and customer needs. However, over the last three years, certain factors began to push the visualization engine to its limits. In response to a growing market, the Modernization Workbench had to support more languages and platforms, and had evolved from a single-user workstation product into a multi-user enterprise product. In addition, the continuing introduction of new functional capabilities has sparked a need for more sophisticated visualization requirements.
With these increasingly sophisticated
usage scenarios, Relativity
Technologies found it more
important than ever to assist users
in managing complex diagrams.
The company decided to purchase
a commercial product to improve
the existing visualization component
of Modernization Workbench.
This decision allowed Relativity
Technologies to focus their efforts on
the primary core competencies of their
product, and to analyze, manage, and
modernize application portfolios.
According to Charles Dickerson, Senior Vice President of Relativity
Technologies, "When we realized
that graph visualization would be a
good return on investment, we shifted
our product strategy in that direction.
Instead of hiring engineers to work
on this project for twelve months,
we were able to accelerate the
visualization project with Tom Sawyer,
and simultaneously save development
cost and time."
Choosing Tom Sawyer
There were a few factors that led
Relativity Technologies to choose
Tom Sawyer Software for their
visualization needs. Tom Sawyer
Visualization, ActiveX Edition,
included many features of the existing
visualization component already
in Modernization Workbench, as
well as several features needed for
future visualization requirements.
Tom Sawyer Visualization was also
available on a number of platforms
that Modernization Workbench already
supported or may support in the future.
Members of the product management and development teams from
Relativity Technologies knew of
Tom Sawyer Software from past
experiences and research. Those
previous experiences, and their
evaluation of a trial version of Tom
Sawyer Visualization, encouraged
them to choose Tom Sawyer Software
for their visualization needs.
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According to Kevin Cruz, Senior
Director of Product Management
of Relativity Technologies, "This
was an easy decision for us. We
had a very positive experience
working with Tom Sawyer's
Sales team and all of the technical
staff that supported us throughout
the evaluation process. They were
consistently very responsive, flexible,
and knowledgeable, and this has
continued to be true since we became
a customer."
The Tom Sawyer Solution
Tom Sawyer Visualization is a fully
customizable and extensible set of
class libraries with APIs for developing
graph visualization applications
quickly and efficiently. Tom Sawyer
Visualization, ActiveX Edition, provides
a paradigm that is almost identical
to the visualization component of
the Modernization Workbench,
enabling seamless integration.
Relativity Technologies used Tom
Sawyer Visualization to enhance
the Modernization Workbench with
viewing and editing features, and a
sophisticated diagram display.
Kevin Cruz acknowledged that,
"The integration of Tom Sawyer
Visualization was straightforward,
allowing us to simultaneously realize some additional functional
requirements not planned in the initial
release, and that even improved our
visualization engine."
The Tom Sawyer Impact
Tom Sawyer Visualization has allowed
Relativity Technologies to return some
of its development resources to their
core competencies. Their product
management and development teams
have been able to focus attention on
representing complex information
in the more usable and creative
formats required by their users. With
the feature-rich functionality of Tom
Sawyer Visualization, Relativity
Technologies could remove the
burden of developing advanced
visualization features from their
product roadmap, saving development
time and cost.
According to Kevin Cruz, "The
initial release of the Modernization
Workbench, with Tom Sawyer
Visualization embedded, allowed
users to produce diagrams that
were more complex than previously
possible, while also improving the
performance of diagram creation.
These improvements, along with some
additional functional enhancements,
have had a positive impact on our
user base and their ability to analyze,
maintain, and modernize their
complex enterprise applications. The
visualization component is one of
the primary tools users have to make
informed decisions based on technical
and business-related application
initiatives."
Overview
- Generate accurate, detailed, and
current documentation of diverse
applications
- Govern, plan, and mitigate risk for
complex application portfolios
- Re-architect, SOA-enable, or redevelop
existing applications
- Lower the cost, risk, and time
needed to adapt applications
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