AnyPresence offers access to our Enterprise MBaaS Platform as a free 30-day trial to give users the opportunity to explore all the capabilities of our platform based on their own needs and IT environment. Having worked with several enterprises that evaluated AnyPresence and other vendors for their mobile and IoT app development projects, we wanted to pass along some best practices for running a successful and efficient trial:
- Define the scope of your project – It’s best to select one or two app use cases, and then build around a subset of those. Ask yourself:
- What do you want to accomplish in your trial?
- What are some apps that we’ve built in the past that we can compare the new process with?
- What are some apps we need to build in the future, and how could this platform help?
- Which features are absolutely critical that we can’t live without?
- Think “Agile” - Don’t try to boil the ocean and overanalyze whether each vendor’s solution can meet every single possible variant of your current and future requirements – no platform is a silver bullet.
- Keep in mind that you are not purchasing an ERP system to run your company on, this is a productivity tool for app developers, so run an agile evaluation process as well
- Think about how long you want to run the evaluation and how many people you want to involve. Is your evaluation process more cumbersome and lengthy than actually using the platform to build an initial app? If so, it may be time to either scope back a trial process, or considering engaging in a paid pilot to actually build an app that can be used
- Don’t worry about testing integration with all your production systems – Focus instead on the testing the connectivity methods that your systems require.
- Ask the vendor whether they have test systems you can connect to. They may use similar systems in their own test environment
- Don’t plan an evaluation to include connectivity to off-limit production systems. It’s probably not worth the IT policy change hassles
- Find alternatives that help you prove the integration technology, if you can’t connect to the actual system. For example, if you have a legacy system that has SOAP APIs, but you can’t connect to it during the trial, test MBaaS connectivity to another public SOAP web service
- Ask for a-hands on tutorial or workshop - The vendor has likely worked with other customers on similar requirements or scenarios, and may be able to share valuable or time saving best practices
- You could try to read all the docs and figure it out yourself, but why spend valuable time learning everything from scratch? The vendor is there to help you, and it’s a good way to see how they can provide support
- Discuss your trial scope with the vendor and ask them to show you the best methods to accomplish the goal. There may be multiple ways of meeting a requirement with their platform, and they can guide on which might be the optimal path
- Set aside time in your schedule during the trial - If you do a trial in an ad-hoc manner, you probably won’t finish in time or hit all your requirements
- You may need to get help from others in the company to access IT resources, make sure they are given a heads up and have time to support your needs
- Don’t forget about any policy requirements, such as ensuring you have taken care of any non-disclosure agreements (NDA), contractor forms, or other items that could delay the evaluation
Running a successful trial may be a little more involved that you originally imagined, but it’s well worth the time. We find that companies who come prepared and allocate as many resources to the trial as possible have the highest chance of success.
We’d love to hear if you have more tips on how to run successful trial, send us a note at info@anypresence.com. You can also go ahead and give AnyPresence a try for free today for 30 days.