Written by: Lynn Cadet
Edited by: Lillian Castro
Reviewed by: Cristian Lopez
TL; DR: Developers have a lot on their plates, from coding and drawing up reports to testing and debugging. These tasks take up much of their time — a resource they don’t have in ample supply. Syncfusion provides developers with the solutions they need to streamline and accelerate their journey to deployment. Its embedded analytics platform, Bold BI, allows developers and business associates to visualize data and share information within its easy-to-use dashboards. We spoke with Chad Church, Senior Sales Engineer at Syncfusion, about the company’s founding story, Bold BI, and how the platform enhances data analytics.
A developer’s job can often seem like a race against the clock. With strict deadlines in place, they have to overcome challenges in the coding process and complete the software delivery life cycle, all while keeping teammates and stakeholders informed. But what do you do if time isn’t always your friend?
For dev teams, finding enough time to complete a project can be a rather elusive task, with time constraints being one of their toughest challenges. Building an application involves multiple steps, from coding and managing project requirements to debugging, testing, and deployment. Often, coding alone can take seven months to a year to complete.
A company called Syncfusion, however, has something to say about that. Syncfusion specializes in creating tools and widget libraries built to make software development and the business side that goes into it simpler and more efficient. Syncfusion blends business intelligence with application development to improve productivity and collaboration between dev teams and other business departments.
“As a developer, you have any number of people wanting things from you. They may want this app, this report, or this dashboard. And our platform lets you deliver all those things much quicker because you don’t have to do all the heavy work,” said Chad Church, Senior Sales Engineer at Syncfusion.
A Founding Story Written By Two Friends
Syncfusion’s story began more than 20 years ago with Founders Daniel Jebaraj and Stefan Hoenig. The duo, who were then working at a software company selling C++ components, became friends. The company was later bought out, and Daniel and Stefan used their stock options to fund and create Syncfusion. With the launch of .NET coinciding with their own, Daniel and Stefan got the idea to build control suites.
“They saw a great opportunity to build these controls and give them to people. That’s what .NET did. C++ requires a lot of sharing stuff around, and all the files must be configured correctly. It was just difficult to manage. Microsoft made it easy,” said Chad.
With a group of eight members, Daniel and Stefan built Syncfusion and its popular Essential Studio. And Microsoft’s involvement didn’t stop with .NET. Two years later, Syncfusion joined Microsoft’s Visual Studio ecosystem as a partner. Today, Syncfusion’s Essential Studio has grown to more than 1,800 controls and frameworks for web, mobile, and desktop applications.
What’s even more impressive is that the company is still fully owned by the founders. While Daniel serves as CEO, Stefan also remains in the mix as Chairman of the Board and President. The company now has more than 1,500 people with 1,000-plus developers working to meet the needs of 1 million-plus users and thousands of companies, including Fortune 500 organizations.
“Over the course of these 20-some-odd years, Syncfusion has never taken any external funding. So they truly are the only owners,” said Chad.
Syncfusion has also branched out with enterprise software for big data processing, data integration, and reports. It entered the realm of business intelligence in 2018 with the launch of its cloud-based Business Intelligence Dashboard Solution.
An ‘Analytics Everywhere’ Application Born From Customer Requests
In June 2019, Syncfusion launched Bold BI, a full-service and cloud-based business intelligence solution. It was the company’s first voyage into embedded analytics and allowed users to create sleek dashboards with relevant data to inform decision-making and boost collaboration. Chad told us that Syncfusion customers played a large part in the release of this dashboard platform.
“The whole point of Bold BI was to make a dashboard. Years ago, customers kept asking us to make a dashboard widget. So we built Bold BI to give users a dashboard bound to some of their data so they can, at a moment’s notice, see what’s happening across their company,” said Chad.
Syncfusion developed Bold Bi for not only development teams but everyone within a company. Bold BI requires no technical know-how and is quite accessible, making it easy for anyone to use. Users can pull metrics, easily design a dashboard, and embed analytics into their products with intuitive widgets. It can also forecast business trends and provide time series support.
“You just take our dashboard, embed it inside your page, and then give it the parameters. You can let your users create their own dashboard for whatever side of the business and manipulate that data to their needs,” said Chad.
Bold BI’s embedded analytics puts business intelligence at its users’ fingertips. It helps make data a natural part of daily operations with support for more than 150 data sources. Teams can leverage Bold BI to display any data that fits their needs to stay informed and drive better decisions. Syncfusion also built Bold BI to assist any industry, from construction to healthcare, so users can visualize data from anywhere and within any sector.
Making Developers’ Lives Easier With Accessible Tools
Syncfusion’s low-code platforms have helped millions of people, including individual developers and massive corporations, streamline their workflows. Bold BI has allowed teams to share and collaborate better with its interactive and intuitive data dashboard. And its UI component suite has saved dev teams time and money when building apps.
Syncfusion continues to grow and has more features in its upcoming lineup. The team expects to release these features within a year. One solution will allow users to consolidate their data sources for better organization and more straightforward analysis.
“We’re going to be able to pin multiple source files as one data source. So maybe you have four Excel files. Then you can make all of them into one data source, which is a big deal,” said Chad.
Syncfusion also plans to add more customizability to the platform. Users will be able to customize their widgets at a lower level. The Bold BI platform will also have embedded slideshows soon, so users can set up a slideshow within their dashboard.
With AI making major waves across industries, Syncfusion also has its own ideas for integrating the technology with its interface. The team will use natural language processing to power its Q&A processes when users ask questions to Bold BI.
“We already have a live chat team. So we’re going through and parsing all those chats. We have our own ticketing system where customers come to us and ask us questions on how to do things. We’re going through all that, and that’s going to be where AI comes from,” said Chad.
