AlpsAnywhere - A trip to Germany and Austria

Last week I spent time in Germany and Austria speaking to customers and presenting at the Software2 EU User Day hosted by our European partners. It was a real learning journey from me. I've never visited this beautiful part of the world but now I understand why tourists flock there during peak season. (Peak - the Alps - geddit?)

Every day's a 'schule' day

After arriving in Munich from Manchester with a lot of (soon to be disappointed) Manchester United fans, the first stop on the trip was a visit to Biberach to visit the University of Applied Science and a really insightful time with Margerita who is the sole administrator of their AppsAnywhere installation.

I knew before the visit that Margerita is highly regarding for her expertise, productivity and understanding of best practice as an AppsAnywhere power user; and rightly so! That was certainly validated as I observed how she'd upgraded to the the latest version - AppsAnywhere 3.1 - and was already making use of one of the key features: pre-launch dialogs.

400 of the University's apps are available via AppAnywhere, unfortunately there was one tricky set of apps that were proving problematic in the labs. There was a work around for getting these apps to students, but the process was happening outside of the AppsAnywhere experience; not ideal for students having to remember different places for different apps. I was able to offer advice of how to make use of our Smart Prioritization feature, which would improve the student experience for that set of apps. But the best bit for me was that by seeing this issue first hand, it gave me confidence in the work we are doing in AppsAnywhere 3.2; to introduce the concept of centralized application templates. This will mean no extra configuration and no complex understanding needed of our powerful feature set. With application templates we can solve this same problem for all of our customers. And for any university wishing to apply the delivery of that app slightly differently, that's ok too. The template that will get you most of the way there, but then you can tweak it until your heart's content for your own unique set-up if needed.    

Following an insightful day at Hochschule Biberach, we crossed the border to Wörgl, Austria and the Software2 EU office where I spent time with our colleagues Eddie, Maria, Corné and Lukas, discussing the challenges and opportunities facing Higher Education IT in the German speaking region of Europe.

After a drive through the Alps and possibly the best view from a motorway service station ever, the final destination of my trip was Vienna ready for the Software2 EU User Day. And what better place to speak to lots of customers in one place than over a Wiener schnitzel in the biergarten? Well…as they say…When in Rome Vienna!

Thursday was the User Day itself at Fachhochschule Technikum Wien, which featured a great mix of presenters and presentations; on both AppsAnywhere and industry topics of interest such as cyber security. Myself and Pete Cooke held a session sharing the AppsAnywhere roadmap and philosophy which gave some insights into where we're heading with 3.2 and beyond; including the Application Library that went down well, followed by a Q&A and feedback session.

We received lots of great suggestions, including many small changes we could make that could be real time savers. Not everything we have to develop are big features and sometimes the smaller wins are what delight people more. There is absolutely no substitute for spending time with customers to understand their problems and how we can use our technology and services to help and this trip was no exception.

Prost!