9 Questions on Migration Offer for IBM ILOG Gantt for .NET
| 24. May 2012 | Posted by Martin Karlowitsch under VARCHART XGantt |
IBM ILOG Gantt for .NET users: It is about time for a change of weather … following IBM’s announcement to discontinue marketing, sales and support for IBM ILOG Gantt for .NET.
With our dedication for providing sustainable enterprise-class Gantt chart controls, we made a strong commitment to all IBM ILOG customers and partners and offered a complete IBM ILOG Gantt for .NET migration package, with which they would be enabled to continue offering a feature-rich, high performing and proven Gantt solution well beyond 2014, which is IBM ILOG’s product horizon.
Don’t wait for the weather to change by itself. Change it by your own and learn more how to migrate from IBM ILOG Gantt for .NET.
Our migration package for IBM ILOG Gantt for .NET customers and partners received very well feedback, and we are in the process of already finalizing the first migrations. In these projects, we received a couple of frequently asked questions – about the migration offer, about our support policy and about some specific features of VARCHART XGantt .NET. We have summarized them below, but would first like to remind you again of our migration offer:
1 development license VARCHART XGantt .NET (modules Basic & Data Editing)
1 day migration-specific support
1 year software maintenance & support
Total 3,999.00 EUR
1. What is included in NETRONIC’s maintenance and support offering?
Other than many other software vendors, we do not work with an anonymous support ticketing system. Typically, our clients work with one dedicated support engineer, of whom they get direct email address and a direct phone number. The service-level agreement we work against is to provide feedback within one business day – independent from which part of the world you are calling. The support we provide spans all specific questions and issues that relate to the usage of VARCHART XGantt. With a valid maintenance and support agreement, you receive all product releases (e.g. minor and major releases) and do not need to pay any update or subscription renewal. In case of severe bugs, we will also provide an intermediate release outside the regular release schedule.
2. What is included in the migration support?
The migration support is twofold. (a) We sense that you might feel awkward starting to work with a new Gantt chart control after having applied IBM ILOG Gantt for .NET for so many years. Hence, we want to intensively help you with your first steps. This already starts in the pre-Sales phase: our commitment is that you can send us your sample data, a screenshot of today’s application and that you get a rapid simple prototype from us covering basic functionality. For free. Even for free, if you later on decide against us. Of course, we can also provide you with the prototype’s source code so that you really get a fast start. In addition to this you (b) will get one additional free of charge senior software developer day (remote) after you purchased VARCHART XGantt. Within this day, we will help you with some Gantt control-related special coding to support you enhancing the prototype rapidly towards your final application.
3. What is your product lifecycle policy? How long do you support your products?
NETRONIC is a financially strong, 37-years old company that is focused on long-term growth. We do not run behind every temporary trend, but we believe in persistence and continuity. One example illustrates this best: we launched VARCHART XGantt ActiveX more than 15 years ago, and still support the product. Even more: we still develop the control although everybody declared ActiveX to be outdated years ago. There seem to be no other Gantt control vendor in the market, who still maintains an ActiveX Gantt product. You can be 100% sure, that we will apply both characteristics also to our VARCHART XGantt .NET Edition control: persistency and continuity.
4. I seriously consider migrating from IBM ILOG Gantt for .NET. Do you have a checklist of things that I need to bear in mind before I start my migration project?
Yes, we do have such a checklist. We thoroughly looked at the IBM ILOG Gantt for .NET product and compared it with our VARCHART XGantt .NET Edition control. When doing so, we found eleven specific topics that are very crucial for a successful migration, and that also reflect some of the very peculiar features of the IBM ILOG product. We will share this checklist with you once we start working on your rapid prototype.
5. You mention the modules Basic and Data Editing. What can I achieve with them?
These two modules provide all functionality that you need to develop an application that visualizes data as a Gantt chart, and that enables the users to visually edit and modify the data. This includes, amongst others, all graphical layout functions for Gantt charts like multi-level grouping and multiple tasks per row in overlapped or optimized mode, a hierarchy view, datelines, data- and event-sensitive assignment of graphical attributes via filters or so-called maps, multiple calendars and calendar grids and enhanced print functionality. Likewise, this package enables the application’s users to move bars horizontally and vertically or to change durations via drag and drop, to create, delete or modify any application data like tasks or activities or links and to perform OLE drag and drop: drag from one XGantt instance to another one or from a different application to an VARCHART XGantt application and vice versa.
6. Do you offer more modules than those two?
Yes, VARCHART XGantt customers optionally (and separately priced) can add two more modules to the standard package: first, they can add a histogram to better visualize and monitor the utilization of certain resources. The histogram calculates the resource loads from application data and displays them: interactive changes like moving a bar in the Gantt chart are reflected in the histogram accordingly so that users can immediately see over and under loads. Second, we also offer some basic resource scheduling by taking into account the maximum load, the resource calendar, the work progress and delivery dates. With the resource scheduling modules we support different planning strategies such as just-in-time or as soon as possible.
7. Which development environments do you support?
With VARCHART XGantt .NET Edition, we support both the .NET framework 2.0/3.0/3.5 as well as the .NET framework 4.0. Of course, we also provide 32- and 64-bit support within one development license. You can find more information in our VARCHART XGantt .NET Edition platform support matrix.
8. AS IBM ILOG Gantt for .NET user, I have very big enterprise customers who want to work with high data volumes without any performance compromises. Can VARCHART XGantt cope with this?
Actually, this is one of the strong points of VARCHART XGantt. The product was not made to suite the trivial requirements of a cheap and simple Gantt chart. It was made especially to meet the needs of large-scale enterprise class applications. As such, the product comes with various methods to deal with huge data volumes in a performance-optimized fashion. These methods on the one hand are targeted to manage performance in case that thousands of nodes need to get worked with in the Gantt chart. However, on the other hand, VARCHART XGantt also comes with methods to support the performance-optimized load of incremental data into the Gantt chart in case that customers face low-latency requirements with their application.
9. Can I test your Gantt chart control in advance? Is there any kind of limitation to the trial versions?
Sure. You can download VARCHART XGantt here. Our trial version has no functional limitations, and you can use it for one month. Please note that you will get free-of-charge support from a senior NETRONIC support engineer during this one month.
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