Move to Microsoft Programming Environment and Tools Doubles Developer Productivity

OverviewCountry or Region: United StatesIndustry: Manufacturing—High tech

Customer ProfileX1 Technologies develops and sells software that makes it easier to find and take action on email, files, and other data on desktops, networked computers, or in the cloud. The company has 32 employ-ees and is based in Pasadena, California.

Business SituationX1 Technologies had developed its products using Delphi, for which limited skilled developers were available. The company was also concerned about ven-dor support and long-term market viabil-ity for its development environment.

SolutionThe company switched to Microsoft development tools, and now uses Visual Studio 2010 Premium and Expression Studio to develop software that will run on the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.

Benefits Compelling user experience Increased developer productivity and

designer-developer collaboration Higher software quality Extensive resources

“With Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework, we’re able to deliver new functionality twice as fast as we could two years ago.”

Christopher Walton, Vice President of Products and Strategy, X1 Technologies

Until 2008, software company X1 Technologies built its products using Delphi. This was starting to present more and more issues—including limited access to skilled resources and concerns about vendor support and marketplace viability. The company now uses Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Premium with MSDN for all product development, and is building the new version of its software using the Microsoft .NET Framework 4 and Microsoft Expression Studio. The company’s move to Microsoft development tools has delivered several key benefits, including a compelling user experience, increased developer productivity, improved developer-designer collaboration, and enhanced software quality—all of which contribute to the company’s ability to bring rich, quality products to market more quickly.

SituationX1 Technologies was founded in 2003, with a mission to make it easier to find and take action on information on desktops, networked computers, or in the cloud. X1 Desktop Search Professional, the company’s flagship product, allows users to search more than 500 file types and data sources through a single interface—including email, attachments, archived email, contacts, calendar, documents, and files on network folders and SharePoint sites. Results are shown in real time, as the user types a search term, eliminating the effort of hunting through various applications, email folders, and file folders.

The company’s software developers are located in the United States and abroad. The development team uses a mix of Agile and Scrum methodologies, including user stories, daily huddles, and two-week sprints. “Our goal is a new release every two to three months, in which we deliver a combination of maintenance fixes and new functionality,” says Sumeet Sheokand, Vice President of Engineering at X1 Technologies.

In 2008, the development team built its products using Delphi—at that time a Borland product. However, that development environment was starting to present more and more issues. “The availability of developers who were skilled in Delphi was one big problem,” says Sheokand. “In addition, with Borland’s sale of Delphi to another company, we were worried about vendor support and viability in the marketplace. So we set out to evaluate other platforms.”

In addition, the company sought a platform and tool set that could help it deliver an even better product—and at an accelerated pace. “X1 Desktop Search Professional is first and foremost a desktop business application, in that it helps people be more productive by enabling them to spend less time searching for information and more time acting on it,” says Christopher Walton, Vice President of Products and Strategy at X1 Technologies. “As such, we wanted a development environment that could help us deliver an even better user experience—including improved performance and deeper integration with the typical business desktop. Of course, we were also looking for ways to improve development team output, which dictates the rate at which we can bring new products and features to market.”

SolutionX1 Technologies now uses Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Premium with MSDN for all product development. The company’s move to Visual Studio began in 2008, after an analysis of its options for replacing Delphi. “Windows Presentation Foundation was one of the key things that led us to choose Visual Studio and the Microsoft .NET Framework,” says Sheokand. “It provides a consistent programming model for desktop applications that run on Windows, along with a clear separation between the application’s user interface and business logic. We really liked the way that Windows Presentation Foundation would enable us to use Extensible Application Markup Language to change the application’s look and feel—without having to worry about the code behind the user interface.”

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“Visual Studio 2010 offers many improve-ments, including better handling of complex XAML, improved debug-ging of multithreaded applications, and improved IntelliSense technology for large C++ projects.”

Sumeet Sheokand, Vice President of Engineering, X1 Technologies

Initial AdoptionAs a productivity tool, X1 Desktop Search Professional integrates with existing user environments, enabling users to search by simply typing into the search boxes in the Windows operating system, the Microsoft Outlook messaging and collaboration client, and other familiar software—or by using the product’s own user interface. Depending on how the application is configured, it will search from among the user’s desktop files, Outlook data, SharePoint sites, network folders, and other locations.

In building X1 Desktop Search Professional, developers took advantage of Windows application programming interfaces (APIs), Outlook APIs, and SharePoint Server web service APIs to deliver an integrated user experience. “We integrate deeply with user desktops at both the user interface level and behind the scenes,” says Sheokand. “From a user experience perspective, users can access our solution using existing search boxes in Microsoft Outlook, on the Start menu, in Windows Explorer, or through a toolbar on the Windows Taskbar. Behind the scenes, a Windows service performs real-time indexing as the data on the user’s system changes, as required to deliver the best performance. We’re able to do this because all of the necessary APIs are provided by Microsoft—open and documented.”

The user interface (UI) component of X1 Desktop Search Professional, which is based on Windows Presentation Foundation and Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML), communicates with the application’s Windows service component using Windows

Communication Foundation. X1 Desktop Search Professional also takes advantage of the Microsoft Managed Extensibility Framework, which provides discovery and composition capabilities for building loosely coupled application components that come together at runtime.

Moving ForwardX1 Desktop Search Professional 6.7.2, which was released in October 2010, is based on the .NET Framework 3.5 and was developed using Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite. X1 Technologies is now working on the next version of X1 Desktop Search Professional, which will run on the .NET Framework 4 and is being developed using a combination of Visual Studio 2010 Premium and Microsoft Expression Studio. Developers are also using Visual Studio 2010 for version 6.7.3—the next maintenance release—by taking advantage of the ability to use Visual Studio 2010 to target multiple different versions of the .NET Framework.

“Visual Studio 2010 offers many improvements, including better handling of complex XAML, improved debugging of multithreaded applications, and improved IntelliSense technology for large C++ projects,” says Sheokand. “The same is true for the .NET Framework 4, which provides improved mechanisms for handling unmanaged code and now includes the Managed Extensibility Framework as a core component. The .NET Framework 4 also provides background garbage collection, which replaces concurrent garbage collection in previous versions and provides better performance.”

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“With one tool set and programming model, we’re able to deliver a product that integrates seamlessly with the Windows desktop, Windows Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Outlook, and Microsoft SharePoint.”

Christopher Walton, Vice President of Products and Strategy, X1 Technologies

The next version of X1 Desktop Search Professional is also the company’s first foray into using Expression Studio, which is included with Visual Studio 2010 Premium. “With Visual Studio 2010 and Expression Blend, which both use XAML, developers can easily implement the user experiences envisioned by designers,” says Sheokand.

BenefitsSince its move to Microsoft development tools and recent upgrade to Visual Studio 2010 Premium, X1 Technologies has gained several benefits—including a more compelling user experience, increased developer productivity, improved developer-designer collaboration, and enhanced testing tools. In addition, the company has used all of these benefits to bring richer, higher-quality products to market more quickly.

Compelling User ExperienceX1 Technologies now delivers a compelling, integrated user experience by taking advantage of Microsoft software from both a development perspective and as a target platform. Users can access X1 Desktop Search Professional with already-familiar desktop elements and methods, including a desktop toolbar, through any search box in Windows, and through the product’s Microsoft Outlook add-in.

“With X1 Desktop Search Professional, users don’t need to learn to look for information in different ways,” says Walton. “Instead, we’re adding new value to the Microsoft software that people already know and use. With one tool set and programming model, we’re able to deliver a product that integrates seamlessly with the Windows desktop, Windows Internet

Explorer, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Outlook, and Microsoft SharePoint.”

In addition, with Windows Presentation Foundation, the company’s application looks and feels like the underlying operating system—regardless of which version of Windows the user is running. “X1 Desktop Search Professional looks like a Windows 7 application when running on Windows 7, like a Windows Vista application when running on Windows Vista, and so on,” says Walton. “What’s more, we’ve been able to achieve this without any custom development and without rewriting the user interface layer multiple times. Because the user interface is based on XAML, we can quickly redesign the application’s look and feel without extensive custom development—as required to optimize for different display settings or user preferences.”X1 Desktop Search Professional also delivers a compelling user experience through strong application performance. “Windows Presentation Foundation uses vector-based graphics, automatically taking advantage of the graphics acceleration hardware in most PCs to deliver a fast and responsive user experience,” says Walton. “Again, this is a benefit that we get out-of-the-box by using Windows Presentation Foundation, without additional work required by our developers.”

Increased Developer ProductivityBy using Visual Studio and the .NET Framework, the company has seen developer productivity improve in several ways. “With the Visual C# development language and the .NET Framework, developers can work at a high level versus having to focus on low-level plumbing,”

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“With the Visual C# development language and the .NET Framework, developers can work at a high level versus having to focus on low-level plumbing.”

Sumeet Sheokand, Vice President of Engineering, X1 Technologies

says Sheokand. “For example, Windows Presentation Foundation lets them easily implement complex UI elements and event handling—such as a list pane that displays search results—with little code. Similarly, Windows Communication Foundation enables us to connect the UI and Windows service components of X1 Desktop Search Professional in a way that requires no plumbing—and is much easier than using the Distributed Component Object Model. The Managed Extensibility Framework also boosts developer productivity, in that our developers can deliver a modular application without having to develop a plug-in framework from scratch.”

The move to Visual Studio 2010 Premium has boosted developer productivity even further. For example, improved handling for complex XAML has reduced wait times for developers. “We have some large XAML files for complex UI composition, with hundreds of settings and a large number of templates,” says Sheokand. “Visual Studio 2008 would stutter when the files were opened, and would sometimes take up to a minute before developers could get on with their work. Visual Studio 2010 does a much better job of handling large XAML files, opening them in a second or two.”

Improved debugging support for multithreaded applications in Visual Studio 2010 has also enhanced developer productivity. “The core of our product is a multithreaded indexing and search engine,” says Sheokand. “Visual Studio 2010 provides better visibility into the interplay of various threads, making it easier to debug this tricky piece of code.”

Developers also benefit from how the IntelliSense technology in Visual Studio 2010 is able to better handle large C++ projects—thereby enabling them to more easily navigate complex code. “Complex and extensive preprocessor and macro definitions would sometimes trip up IntelliSense in Visual Studio 2008, whereas Visual Studio 2010 comes out with flying colors,” says Sheokand.

In turn, all of these enhancements to developer productivity are enabling X1 Technologies to deliver richer products more quickly. “We’re definitely benefiting from increased speed of development, which enables us to deliver new features to market more quickly,” says Walton. “With Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework, we’re able to deliver new functionality twice as fast as we could two years ago.”

Improved Developer-Designer CollaborationBy using Expression Studio, X1 Technologies has also improved its ability to deliver compelling products—in terms of both functionality and time-to-market. “Whatever designers can create in Expression Studio, developers can implement in Visual Studio,” says Walton. “Today, we don’t need developer input on a UI design—it’s strictly between the product manager and designer. In addition, through the use of shared XAML, developer and designer can work in parallel instead of serially, which further reduces time-to-market. Just as important, the end product stays true to the designer’s vision versus the developer’s interpretation.”

Higher Software Quality

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“Skilled developers are much more plentiful and easier to find now that we’re using Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework.”

Sumeet Sheokand, Vice President of Engineering, X1 Technologies

The development team at X1 Technologies has also taken advantage of Visual Studio 2010 Premium to deliver higher-quality software.

“We’re actively using the unit testing, code coverage, and test data generation features of Visual Studio 2010, which help us ensure that our code works as intended,” says Sheokand. “We’re also implementing automated UI tests, for which we’re using the WHITE framework on CodePlex. We have hundreds of UI automation tests that reduce the need for manual testing, enabling us to complete a full cycle of tests overnight after developers have checked in code for the day. This allows us to do continuous integration, stems bug propagation, and helps keep the team on schedule for delivery.”

Extensive ResourcesX1 Technologies now has many more development resources and much more information at its disposal. “Skilled developers are much more plentiful and easier to find now that we’re using Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework,” says Sheokand. “If we don’t have the answer to a technical challenge in house, odds are good that the answer is readily available within the Microsoft developer community—just a quick search away on the Microsoft Developer Network. With Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework, we’re free from the shackles of our prior development

platform and are able to more quickly deliver richer, higher quality software.”

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 is an integrated development system that helps simplify the entire development process from design to deployment. Unleash your creativity with powerful prototyping, modeling, and design tools that help you bring your vision to life. Work within a personalized environment that helps accelerate the coding process and supports the use of your existing skills, and target a growing number of platforms, including Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 and cloud services. Also, work more efficiently thanks to integrated testing and debugging tools that you can use to find and fix bugs quickly and easily to help ensure high-quality solutions.

For more information about Visual Studio 2010, go to www.msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio

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For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:www.microsoft.com

For more information about X1 Technologies, visit the website at: www.x1.com

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Software and Services Microsoft Visual Studio− Microsoft Visual Studio 2010

Premium with MSDN Microsoft Expression Studio

Technologies− Extensible Application Markup

Language (XAML)− Microsoft Managed Extensibility

Framework− Windows Presentation Foundation− Windows Communication Foundation