Being frustrated with the status quo is never fun, but frustrations can lead to great things. Entrepreneur and businessman Richard Branson, for example, has said in the past that the best businesses come from people’s bad personal experiences.
Another example is Stripe, the online payment processor. Its founders have said they started the company after being frustrated with the technologies that were available at the time to allow businesses to trade online.
One of those founders is John Collison. He said: “There are so many places where clearly a better service or a better business [could exist], or there’s some opportunity to fix an inefficiency in the world. You can think of many of the most successful start-ups of late, in a way, being answers to frustrations with how the world worked.”
Frustration was also the launch point for Access IT Automation’s flagship product, Access Capture.
Born Out of Frustration
David Butler-McAllister is an EUC expert and is the Co-Founder & Chief Operating Officer of Access IT Automation.In a recent interview on the Liquidware podcast, David said: “Access Capture was ultimately born out of frustration, really, of me running application management, packaging, testing, and deployment teams. I knew there were so many things that could be done quicker, better, and in an automated fashion. So, we built Access Capture to solve those frustrations I was experiencing.”
Solving Real-World Problems
Access Capture was created from experience to solve real-world problems in large companies and corporations.
David said: “I got involved in the EUC and application packaging space when I worked at JP Morgan. I was running the packaging, testing, and delivery for all the banking apps and vendor apps.
“And the process – it was a very long process. App discovery, back and forth questions with product owners and vendors, etc., but that’s where I got my good grounding in very large organisations and the importance in application management of getting things right first time.”
The product that David would help create, Access Capture, solved the problems he and his peers in application management and EUC had been experiencing. It did this through automation and a focus on getting things right the first time.
Enabling Your Transition to Modern Application Platforms
Modern technology strategies are about pressing forward, continuous improvement, and ensuring your organisation remains productive and efficient in an increasingly competitive world. As a result, Access Capture isn’t just about making the day-to-day easier. It can also facilitate your modernisation and digital transformation strategies.
David said: “Access Capture is ultimately an enablement tool. We can enable people to get onto modern platforms, modern delivery methods, modern package types, and modern deployment types by using automation. And we can do this in bulk using our framework of APIs.”
Comprehensive and Flexible
That framework of APIs makes Access Capture both comprehensive and flexible.
“We can create from any type of installer and output it to an MSI,” David said. “So, a loose set of files or an executable install routine, etc. We have a very interactive way that we can package applications and create a robust MSI, so you have a starting point.
“We’re not just about taking the customer’s already packaged applications. We might want to create first ourselves or the customer might want us to get them into a more robust status first.
“And of course that then supports legacy deployment and SCCM as well. So, we take that burden away, the whole back and forth working with an app discovery team, have you got the install files, have you got the licenses, and what are the instructions? We can help create those installation instructions and the robust MSI out the back.
“Once we have a robust MSI, or any form of MSI technology from a customer, we can then move it forward using a bulk approach with our set of APIs to convert that into any type of technology as required.”
From there, Access Capture can test and deploy at any scale, with the only limitation being the number of virtual machines that are available for testing prior to deployment.
“We had one customer that gave us 100 machines, so we were cranking out 100 apps at a time,” David said.
The Takeaways
So, what are the takeaways from this article? One is that those everyday frustrations you experience in life could be the seed for a new product or company.
And then there is application management, automating packaging processes, and transitioning to modern application platforms. For that, you need Access Capture. Get in touch with us at Access IT Automation today.
