Jazz 1.0 Released
I'm very proud to announce the release of Jazz 1.0. It has been about 2 months I had this idea and from that moment on, it has been lots of lines of code to make this thing happen.
Where the idea came from ?
mkdir teste
Source | Output |
---|---|
123.45 | 123.45 |
123 | 123.00 |
123.4 | 123.40 |
I work in a very big company in pharmaceutics area, specifically as an IT Business Analyst supporting payroll and human resources areas.
In a certain another day in paradise, one of my supported users from Payroll Area came to be with
a specific use case. The contracted Bank for the employees was changing to Citibank.
That means that the Payroll Analyst would need to figure out a way to provide the Massive Bank File with employees payments
to the Bank. And there was no payroll solution in place to provide the file in the specific format.
The first thing that came to the mind was to use one of the enterprise solutions available in the company, in that case, WebMethods or Alteryx. Well, both solutions would resolve the problem. However, with some cons implications.
WebMethods solution would require a project implementation, engage IT technical area, high cost for initial implementation and on-going costs for support.
Alteryx could be another solution, which in the company was presented as a self-service solution, in which business user, by himself can configure integrations. At the end, that was not so true. The tool showed as very complex for business users. That means that IT support also would be required for initial implementation and on-going operation. Additionally, a budget approval would be required to have an user license. Well, not good..
The simpler idea would be to have an excel macro to resolve the problem. The user could add the data into excel, press a button, and voilá...file transformed...This definately could resolve the problem..Well, but only that very, very specific problem. All about all the possible others? Would I need to create a macro for each problem? Other cons in this solution is that usually, the excel macros tend to change the behavior, depending on the excel version, or computer regional options...That solution could put me to bad position, the user would always depend on me, and only me to maintain that macro. And I don't want that child.. :-)
Then I started thinking in how many similar use cases I had close to me, in my owen work enterprise environment. Integrations between enterprise systems and legacy systems were very common. And the solutions implemented in all cases were expensive and very difficult to implement.
Back to the problem: Come on, the user only wants a excel to be transformer into a text file. That is rocket science!
What If
What if I had a portal with a very nice user friendly interface, in which the user by himself (truly) could configure it's integration package, not only converting a file, but configuring steps in it's workflow, and at the end, pack the solution, and download it...and the most important, could pay only for that small package, how about $10 box.. ? Additionally, the user could run this process in it's own computer, no need of licences, servers, IT folks engagement...
That's what the Jazz offers...
The collaborative model
At this moment, it is only me and some friends at the Jazz Core Team. How many integrations would I need to develop before launching the product...that would take a life!
The solution to solve this problem is basically based on WordPress idea. In the WordPress platform, any developer can join the community, and start contributing, by creating themes and plugins.
From here came the idea of the MarketPlace, the developers can create the packages and plugins for Jazz, and publish in the Jazz MarketPlace, for a fair price...
With this model, I really hope the community grows fast, and more and more plugins and packs can be available an ready to go!
Why "Jazz" ?
The whole idea started with the need of a transformation of a excel file into a text file. Then I decided to create a Transformer. Got the reference? If you as a Nerd like me, you probably got! Also, I'm used to listen for Jazz during my development time. That is pretty much it! :-)
Conclusion
Well, this is just the first blog post! I hope you could first find this post, and liked the idea!
If you liked the idea and want to be part of the Jazz Core team: write to us**