As part of our new UK&I Partner Spotlight series, we sat down with one of our longstanding partners, George James Software.
Here, the leading software development company’s founder and CEO, George James discusses how our two organisations have been working together for almost 35 years, the joint successes we’ve seen, and the secret to building this long-lasting relationship.
InterSystems: Cast your mind back, what made George James Software partner with InterSystems?
George James: Personally, I have worked with InterSystems since 1979, where I used the technology to build healthcare applications. From my experiences back then, I knew when I set out on my own in 1989 and founded George James Software that I wanted InterSystems technology to be a core part of the business.
How does InterSystems help you and your end customers innovate?
Our aim has always been to augment InterSystems excellent technology with developer tools that customers can use to help with maintaining and supporting their applications.
InterSystems provides a full feature data platform with extensive libraries and integration capabilities which we leverage within our product offering. New capabilities, such as AI Gateways, are already to hand on InterSystems platforms when and where we need them, making it easy for us to innovate.
Are there any customer projects that you’re particularly proud of working on with InterSystems?
One that springs to mind is our work with a large university hospital in Belgium, which approached us a few years ago to help solve some source control problems it was experiencing.
The hospital had been using InterSystems platforms for some years but came to us as its systems had grown and become more complex and diverse, creating a greater need for a better source control solution. Deploying code changes to production environments was largely a manual process, which was only possible 3 times a year due to the downtime it would cause. It had become complex and unwieldy, resulting in issues that were frequently affecting live systems when processes and procedures broke down.
How did you help them overcome those challenges?
We provided the hospital with a full-service implementation of our Deltanji source control solution which is based on InterSystems IRIS data platform. It's now fully integrated within their environment and provides secure access to the source code within the hospital.
We worked with the hospital to design and build the workflows that matched the hospital’s existing procedures, but with the assurance that only an automated solution can provide.
The hospital has been using Deltanji for about 18 months and is reaping the benefits. They now work using an Agile methodology, facilitating the adoption of 3-week sprints with the capability to strategically plan no-downtime releases. This is due to the clear and comprehensive overview provided by Deltanji. This has led to a substantial increase in the implementation of new features and the resolution of bugs compared to their previous practices. Additionally, the hospital has gained a heightened sense of confidence when it comes to code deployment across various servers, underpinned by the constant assurance of the status of code facilitated by Deltanji.
What do you like most about working with InterSystems?
Over the last almost thirty-five years that I’ve worked with InterSystems, I’ve been fortunate to work with some extremely dedicated and enthusiastic individuals. You really get the sense that they’re invested in our success. This long-lasting partnership with InterSystems has been instrumental in our ability to thrive for over three decades, thanks to the continuous innovations and new capabilities within the technology. InterSystems’ on-going commitment to technological advancement has played a fundamental role in our long-term success.
What has been your experience of working with the InterSystems Worldwide Response Center (WRC)?
I can honestly say I’ve not come across an equivalent to the WRC in any other company I’ve worked with. If you have a problem, the WRC wants to solve it and will ensure they do that. I really love their ‘can-do’ attitude; if we have a problem, we know we can rely on the WRC team to go above and beyond to resolve it.
For example, one of our Deltanji source control customers was experiencing intermittent crashes of an InterSystems process on their AIX platform when transferring source code between environments. WRC analysed core dumps from the site, worked tirelessly to create the problem, diagnosed it as an operating system bug, and devised a workaround that allowed the site to continue working.
Is there anything you can comment on with regards to future projects or developments you will be working on with InterSystems?
Since InterSystems selected VS Code as its strategic IDE, we are offering migration strategies and training to support the adoption of VS Code with InterSystems platforms.
Our involvement in actively contributing to VS Code itself, creating and maintaining a range of VS Code extensions, and our expertise in InterSystems technologies, puts us in the unique position of having deep knowledge and understanding of both InterSystems platforms and VS Code.