Following our previous article we now take a look at a new decade and a new century – 2000.

As with before there is plenty of tech industry and general nostalgia – some things you may remember, others you may have forgotten over time. Ultimately, we take a look at the changing programming landscape and what it meant for new companies such as Merisis.

The 2000’s – a new century dawned and there was a lot to take in…

On the positive side of things, the Summer Olympics were held in Sydney in the year 2000. Officially called the “Games of the XXVII Olympiad” it was one where England had made a bid to host (with Manchester being the ‘host’ city), but ultimately lost out to Australia. In terms of the medal table, Great Britain came a fairly respectable 10^th.

Also of note for this decade was the € Euro entering circulation, the creation of the role of Mayor of London and the retirement of the Anglo-French supersonic airliner, Concorde.

Unfortunately, the early 2000’s are also remembered for a dramatic and downright horrifying event – the 9/11 terror attacks in New York. The world really seemed to have changed at this moment.

The rise of tech and the decline of the high street

The economic landscape didn’t fare too well at this time either – a case brought to home when UK stalwart Woolworth closed its doors in 2009 representing the decline of the high street had truly begun. Many fingers of blame regarding such retail struggles were aimed firmly at the rise of online shopping, however Woolworth’s online presence only lasted a further six years.

Just a few years before Woolies disappeared from our streets, we suffered a global financial crisis leading to recession. This decade was certainly hitting hard. Despite all these challenges, the world of tech still moved at great pace.

Internet use rose from 6.7 to 25.7% of the world’s population and Web 2.0 (and broadband internet) meant users had a more visual experience with images and video. Many familiar websites were created in the 2000’s, such as Wikipedia (2001), Google Earth (2001), iTunes (2001), Facebook (2004), YouTube (2005) and Spotify (2008).

What this meant for consumers

If the 1990’s saw tech becoming more synonymous with consumers, then the early 2000’s certainly saw this notion cemented. Tech was well and truly established as part of everyday life: mobile phones, games consoles, cars – the list is endless. More people had more computers which were easier to use and faster than before. The humble pen and paper was becoming rarer in the business context and information was well and truly digital.

Servers at this point (predominantly IBM for most FTSE-sized companies) were becoming smaller and more advanced.  Previously they were huge – anywhere between 100-150 ft long and could fill an entire room, but the ever-advancing nature of tech meant the correlation between processing scale and physical size was changing.

Remember the IBM mantra from our first blog? An alternative take on it was “you never got sacked for buying IBM” due to its robust reliability and backwards compatibility. It was expensive but never fell-down. If it wasn’t broken….

But changes, or rather progression was afoot.

A changing programming landscape for the tech industry

It wasn’t just hardware which was evolving – Java wasn’t the only kid on the block as other open programming languages, such as PHP, came into much greater use than they previously had.

PHP was not quite a business-used developer language yet – with ‘yet’ being the key word here. PHP 4, powered by the Zend Engine 1.0, was released in 2000 followed by PHP 5 (powered by the new Zend Engine II) in July 2004.

PHP 5 included new features such as improved support for object-oriented programming, the PHP Data Objects (PDO) extension (which defines a lightweight and consistent interface for accessing databases), and numerous performance enhancements.

PHP was becoming more powerful, more versatile and for people like Jon and Darren, more useable.

Programming language opens the server door

The key importance about the greater use of Java and PHP and the move to open-source programming languages was that they could run on many different and cheaper servers, more so than the proprietary RPG language on the IBM AS/400.

From a business technology perspective, this was huge.

Merisis – launched in 2000

Jon and Darren started the foundations of Merisis in 1998 whilst working at GeoLogistics [see previous article], then in 2000 the business was formally launched from Jon’s dining room. There was officially a new entrant to the tech industry.

The company strategy was quite simple: Adapt & Adjust. Jon and Darren knew from experience that many large organisations were restricted by disparate legacy systems. This proved to be a two-sided challenge as aging IT legacy systems were a threat to progress, and disparate systems a threat to productivity – however complete replacement was a threat to business as usual and came with a large financial investment. What could businesses do?

Recognising that many businesses would be slow or restricted to wholesale technology changes, Merisis continued working with IBM AS/400 but developed their own product, Freestyle-400 – a lightweight alternative to IBM’s WebSphere.

Merisis therefore made life simpler – offering customers solutions with the ability to program the AS/400, to adapt and grow with Freestyle-400 and offer a completely new approach to a Java based solution. This was faster and a more cost-effective way forward, demonstrating not just the agility of tech companies such as Merisis, but also of the changing industry too.

Some of their first larger projects included:

• Budget Insurance Group – their first online car insurance quotation system which would then lead to home and caravan insurance, then ultimately the comparethemarket brand.

• Glenmorangie supplier portal – to view requirements for raw materials.

• UECC (United European Car Carriers – part of the NYK Group). Test project in Turkey leading to a long-term relationship

• A first mobile App! (for a logistics customer to track shipments on a PDA)

The benchmark is set for Merisis

This mindset and foundation of clients and projects really set Merisis up for what they were to become today. Not just content with churning out projects at pace for the sake of it, Jon and Darren have always understood the technological landscape which their customers face, and the challenges it creates for them. Understanding the benefits and challenges of the workings of IBM systems is an example of this.

Knowing that technology evolves, but also doesn’t always start from a clean slate, is also central to the relationships Jon and Darren fostered in those early days.

However, as we all know, the tech industry just keeps on changing.

In Part 3 we will come up to date with Merisis with more Apps, more logistics and more problem solving.

1. 1. Credit: E Gammie, Concorde at Baginton Concorde performing a low-level wheels down flypast at a Baginton air show. Concorde_at_Baginton_-_geograph.org.uk_-_156846.jpg ↩︎
2. 2. The PHP elePHPant; Credit: Vincent Pontier – http://www.elroubio.net/elephpant_download.php http://php.net/elephpant.php ↩︎

The Capture Captain mobile app was the brainchild of Nico Cellabos-Jones. His aim – to utilise the everyday tech of a mobile phone to capture and create professional content from all corners of the globe.

The Challenge

After their proof of concept stage, the Capture Captain directors needed to take their idea from ‘back-bedroom’ to professional.

Their vision was extremely clear to the extent that technical capability of a supplier was equalled by that of shared values and a strong relationship.

As a start-up, it was also critical that all aspects of the brief could be delivered on the agreed budget – meaning absolute transparency and no surprises.

Part of the vision of Capture Captain was that the app needed to offer an amazing experience for the user. Knowing that people would use the product with little to no introduction or training, it needed to be intuitive but also needed to operate very smoothly and in an aesthetically pleasing way.

This meant that attention to all levels of detail was imperative. A button alone required thought and consideration – and this was before Merisis had been engaged.

The overall outcome was for a functioning app, available for Capture Captain to commercialise..

Our Approach

For Merisis, it was important to understand and appreciate the overall vision of the client. As their ideas and creative application were so defined, a lot of focus was given to helping realise not just the technical challenge, but the visual nuances too.

Although a strong brand had been created, an app hadn’t been fully delivered as of yet, so ensuring the correct visual reactions and transitions – down to the last pixel – was all part of Merisis’ process.

But to really deliver, Merisis needed to not only appreciate the role the app will play within someone’s world – but also what problems was it trying to achieve, and how it would be used.

One of the larger challenges was that of data transfer – something which, done badly, could easily render the app useless at worst, or very frustrating at the very least.

Another key challenge, considering the tight budget, was deciding if to build iOS first, or Android. The result was a solution which could enable both platforms.way.

The Outcome – a slick and effective mobile app

Capture Captain launches successfully and with great success – much of which is down to the tenacity and promotion of the directors – however Merisis are proud in an app which was delivered as promised, but also in building a relationship and understanding which continues to grow with new projects.

The app’s use has crossed continents, joined families and enabled businesses to get video messaging to market in a fast and professional way.

For more info on Capture Captain, click here.

Logistics technology: Yusen Logistics use an industry standard software solution which is the digital heart of their transport management services. However, in line with customer requirements and Yusen Logistics’ strategic digital services vision, there was a recognised need to offer a greater level of personalisation and customisation which would therefore create a more bespoke customer experience, but without incurring excessive development fees or starting anew.

The Challenge

Unfortunately, the embedded software did not offer the flexibility or customisation options required. Yusen Logistics’ requirement was to create an interface which enabled all key contributors and owners of different elements of the logistics process to have greater visibility at any given time. An additional goal was to improve efficiency within the ordering logistics process.

The challenge for Merisis was to design and build a dashboard which was to be both very flexible as well as retaining the valuable data from the ‘off the shelf’ software solution too. It was extremely important that Merisis’ solution didn’t create additional or repeat work for Yusen Logistics or indeed, for their customers.

Our Approach

Merisis worked alongside Yusen Logistics and combined their understanding of the logistics industry with technical capability to create a solution which would seamlessly interact with the content on the base software package used across the business.

To start the project, meetings and workshops were arranged which soon identified duplicate processes within the incumbent solution as well as a dependence on manual updates and notifications which could lead to error and increased processing time.

In addition, Merisis felt that other technologies such as GPS location tracking was not being utilised to its best, and therefore saw ways to modernise the tracking process. A key part of the challenge was ensuring the central system was not replaced and all additions were to act as enhancements. This was to make sure the users of the system had an uninterrupted and stress-free experience and the benefits of previous work was retained.

The Outcome – Logistics Technology that delivers