| | OCTOBER 20188CIOReview100100100100000010010010010001000010000100001000010000110010100100100010010010010000000011100001001001001000100001000010000100000001110000100100100100010000100001000010000100011100001001001001001001000100100100000010000100001010010010001000100001100111000110000001100000001110100010101100000000010000001000010000110100101000001000010100001001000010000100000101001010100110000100101000110001000111100010100100000010011001000010000100000100100000011100101111100000100000100001001001000010100000011001000100000100000001111010001001101000000000111000000010000001000010000000001110001100110000110001000011100100100000000100001001001001001011001011100001000100100100000100001000010000100000010000110001001110000100100100100010000010000100001000001000010000100110001000000100000001001000000011000101000100100110000100100110001000011001000100100010000100000001100001100001100000100000011001011001010010001001000010000100000100001000010000011001001000001001100010010000010000011000010000010000100000011001101000000001110000001001001000111100001001000100100010000100001000010000001000011100010000010000100001000010000100001111001010010101100000100000001000010000100001000011100010100101010000000100010000100001010000000010000100001100100100101010001100010010001000010000100001000010000111001010010010011000010000100001000010000100001100110010010101000100001000100001000010000100001000011100010100101001001001010010010001000010000100001000000100001100100100000000011100000101001001001000100000100000000001110000100100010000000001110000001001001100000000001110000100100010000000001110000100100010010000001001001001000100001000010000100001000001100101001001100001000010000100001000001000011001010011010010010010000010000100001000000100001000011001011001000000011100001001001001000100001000001000010000000011100001001001001000100001000010000001000010001111000010010010010001000010000100001100001000011001000100010010001000010000100001000011000011001010000010001001001000100001000010000100000100001100110000000010111110000001001001001000100001100011000000011100001001001001000100001000110010000010010010010001000010000100001000010000011100110011001000100001000010000100001000011000101000101101001000100100010000100001000010000100000110011010001000010010000100100010000100001000010000001000001100010111110000100101001001000100001000010100001000000100000011001100100000100001000000101000000001010000010000110001010001010100100000000000100000111111000100000000011111110001111111111001000000000000010000000001111111000000011111111000111000000000000110001111111000000000000111100000000000000000011111100000000000000000000111000000011110110101010000110000000001000010000000000000000001010100011111110000001100100010000111000000000100001111010000000000000010001100001001000001000000011111111000000100100100100001000000111111100000100100100000000010001000000000000000000000000010000000000000010000001000000000110000001110000100110001000001100010000111111000011000111100000010000000001111110000000011110000110100000000100001000011000000000011000000000001010100101010101011000000000000000000111111110000000001010100001010000000010000000000001110001001000000000000000111101010100000000000000000000000000111100000000010100101111110000000010100000000000000101010000010000000000000000001000000000000000000010100000000010000000000000000010000100001010100 000011110 000001001100001000000000000010000000000000011100010001001000000000000001100000011 000100000 010 010000000110000 0 00010011 010100000000110 1000 01 0 0000 00 0000 00110 00 0 1 11 0000 1 11 100100000 0 0 0000000000 10 0101010 1100 100001 0 000000 00 1 0101000000000000000010101011010101100000000000000010000000101010000000111000110000 00000000 0 00 000 1100000000 000000 010000000 000 000 0000001000010 1 001 00 00 00011100001010110001000011100000000 00000000000100000000000000000 00 000000000010100 0000011000000000000000 0000000110010000000001 0000000000000000000000 000000 00001000 0000000 10000000000000010000000000000 0000001000000 01 000000000000000000001 00111000000000010000111100000 0000111000000000 00001110 011110000000000000000000000000000000100000000 010000000000 1000000000 0000000010000000000000 1111000000000000011000000000000001110000000000000000000001111000000000000000000000111100000 110000000000000 000000000000001111100000110000000000000001111010000000000000000000000000000000000 00000001111110000100000000001111000000000011100001100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000010000111100001111100000100011000000000011110000000000000000000000000000111000100000111100000000011100000001111111001110000000000000000000000000000000000By Patrick Quinn, CIO, Acuity Brands LightingDILIGENT IT ADOPTION FOR MAXIMUM GAINEvolving with IT Advancements in Cloud, Mobile, and ERPCloud-based services, especially Platform-as-a-Service are relatively new trends that are now having a significant impact on concerns about security; cost, performance, and ease of management have been largely addressed. Acuity has been taking advantage of many Software-as-a-Service platforms for the last 5 years, but it has only been very recently that we have seen significant benefit in moving our heavy-transaction business systems out of our datacenter and into the cloud.Of course, mobile productivity apps continue to be a major trend. We now design all our applications to be mobile friendly firstwhich makes us think hard about what features and functions truly provide benefit to our customers, and also forces us to develop user interfaces that are intuitive and have fast response times. A combination of HTML5 and Javascript is the development `language' of choice, especially for business systems, as we can develop one code-set and it will (for the most part) run on any modern platform, mobile and desktop. New toolsets such as Kendo from Telerik are making it easier and easier to develop cross-platform applications.One more trend I am seeing is less desire to purchase `all-in-one' ERP platforms. IT leaders are looking for `best in class' solutions that focus on enabling a specific set of processes, and are robust and open enough to integrate into an enterprise platform that is made up of a set of solutions that are purchased and home-grown. For example, we are in the process of deploying a new system to enable our product engineering processes from design to manufacturing. We are utilizing a software system that was developed by the vendor specifically for enabling those engineering processes, and are integrating it into our overall Acuity Business System. This engineering platform, when fully rolled out, will replace the tools that our design and manufacturing engineers currently use, and that are a part of a larger ERP system we deployed in the last decade.Keep Track of Your Data in the CloudSoftware as a Service providers have developed many terrific tools that our associates can quickly acquire, learn how to
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