App Development

Industry 4.0 Challenges – Part 3

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Industry 4.0 Challenges

In today’s post we’ll look at some of the Industry 4.0 challenges and risks presented by adopting it, to contrast with the benefits that we looked at in part two. Before adopting any strategy in this area, you should understand these challenges and see how they apply to your own business.  Cost of Industry 4.0 Adoption In part two we made the case that Industry 4.0 adoption will lead to lower costs over time and observed that the return on investment time for adopters was decreasing. Neither of these points eliminate the very real cost impact of adoption. There are significant costs, from replacing equipment with modern IoT connected options, … Read more

Automated Data Parsing Saves Time & Better Allocates Resources

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A provider of real estate advisory services contacted Imaginet because they were loading large amounts of data into their databases using a batch process as opposed to automated data parsing. The data being loaded was used for making critical business decisions. All the data being loaded required validation and much of it required transformation as it came from disparate sources, each using their own document standards. The process that loaded the data was very manual, taking a lot of effort from multiple people.  Automated Data Parsing Setup We created a process where a user could upload the excel file and have it processed automatically. When the file was loaded it … Read more

Industry 4.0 Benefits – Part 2

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Industry 4.0 Benefits

In part two of the Industry 4.0 blog series let’s look at a few of the great benefits of adoption. More and more companies are increasingly adopting strategic approaches around digital transformation. The benefits of leaning in to new digital tools build on each other to yield undeniable outcomes for companies that successfully execute these strategies.  Industry 4.0 – Visibility  With highly connected devices and a vast amount of data within arm’s reach, the modern factory becomes visible in ways it never could before. Real time monitoring and big data analysis puts this all front and center for everyone from top level executive to factory floor worker, at any time.  … Read more

Industry 4.0 – Part 1 – The History 

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Industry 4.0

What is Industry 4.0 Industry 4.0 is a term that has been around for about a decade already. Also known as the fourth industrial revolution, it’s a term that’s quietly slipped by a lot of people’s radars. A quick recap is required. The first industrial revolution occurred in the late 1700’s with the advent of steam and coal power and genesis of the manufacturing industry taking over from agriculture as the backbone of the global economy.   The second industrial revolution took place in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s with the onset of new energy sources, electricity, oil, and gas, along with process refinements in the factory such as the … Read more

Custom Applications: Choosing the Right Company for Your Needs 

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Custom Applications

Custom Applications: Choosing the Right Company for Your Needs  Today, many organizations are turning towards custom applications to use in their daily operations. Some will use them to target and attract new customers and others will use them to improve their daily operations. If you are looking for a custom application, you are one of many organizations that are searching for the same thing. But due to the volume of application development experts, how do you choose the right one for your needs?  There are many factors to consider when selecting an organization to build your custom application. You should:  How Can I Evaluate an Organization’s Experience and Expertise?  The … Read more

Microsoft Secure Score Shows Effectiveness of Data Security

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Microsoft Secure Score

Microsoft Secure Score Shows Effectiveness of Data Security   A current hot topic of conversation in the technology world is safety and security – and for good reason. It often feels as though we are constantly being warned of new scams or online threats. Remaining diligent is essential, especially when it comes to your organization’s data. The Microsoft Secure Score is an effective way to measure the quality of your organization’s protection policies.  What is the Microsoft Secure Score? The Microsoft Secure Score is a tool available in the M365 security portal that helps you measure and improve your organization’s security tactics in Microsoft 365.   It gives you a numerical summary … Read more

Secret Manager to Protect Sensitive Data in App Development

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Secret Manager

Secret Manager to Protect Sensitive Data in App Development   How you deal with sensitive data is critical to your organization’s success. If you are not careful with sensitive company or client data, you risk losing trust between you and your employees or customer base. But how do you protect sensitive data when developing a new application where you may need access to said data? Secret Manager provides a solution for protecting sensitive data during application development.  What is Secret Manager?  Secret Manager is used to store sensitive data during the development of an ASP.NET Core application development project. It keeps the “secrets” out of the source code and stores them … Read more

Staying Current with Technology: The Benefits & Drawbacks

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Staying Current with Technology

Recently Microsoft announced several updates for their flagship technologies. These updates included a new version of .NET, .NET 8, as well as updates to Entity Framework Core, .NET Maui, and more. These updates are not limited to Microsoft either – Angular recently released Angular 17. Every year there are new updates and versions released for many development technologies, but should you be updating your applications every year? Here are a few points to consider:  New Features  The first and most obvious benefit is the new features updates provide. Generally, these features introduce benefits like quality-of-life changes for developers, which help development go faster, easier, or become more streamlined. Sometimes, new … Read more

Application Update Leads to Improved Performance and Functionality

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A provider of real estate advisory services contacted Imaginet to assist them with an application we had previously developed for them. Most of the application was developed using .Net framework 4.8, which is now outdated. The application’s front end was developed with version 8, but now Angular 16 is the most updated and recent version. An application update would improve the overall use, performance, security, and functionality of the application itself.   Our Solution  The application required an update so it would use .Net core and Angular 16 as the frontend. The client also requested other fixes that would improve the performance, such as moving some data processing from the Angular … Read more

Different Selection of .net Data Structure Has a Positive Impact on Performance 

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.net Data Structure

Today, programmers often fail to consider the performance impact of certain programming choices. Computers have, and continue to, advance and their seemingly unlimited memory results in a programmer’s lack of programming considerations. In one of my recent projects, I had to search reference data from multiple large lists of data (between 500 – 4000 entries in each list) from a numeric ID field in another large list of objects. In this blog, I will explore the positive impacts a different selection of .net data structure can have on performance.    Adopting the standard naive approach of storing the reference data in a List and then using a LINQ query to … Read more