Sandisk Cuts Development Time By 30 Percent With Progress

SanDisk designs, develops and manufactures flash memory storage devices and software. Its memory products are used in many market segments such as consumer electronics, mobile devices and various computing sectors.

As an industry leader in the flash storage area, SanDisk maintains sophisticated processes around planning and can forecast market trends five or more years ahead, using multiple spreadsheets  from different departments and analysts. However, the spreadsheet-based processes were inefficient, and the spreadsheets were inconsistent among various IT teams throughout the company. SanDisk needed a custom application that automates the current planning processes and minimizes the use of spreadsheets.

Because SanDisk uses SAP for various applications and business intelligence (BI), the planning team wanted to leverage SAP for its planning application and build the BI interface. To keep pace with the company’s planning schedule, it was critical to go live with this application before Q3; otherwise, business users would not be able to leverage the new application, and the project could be scrapped.

Progress partner AI Software proposed building a web-based custom application using Kendo UI® by Progress, which provides web developers with a feature- rich set of browser-based HTML5 and jQuery controls that are easy to use and work seamlessly in cross- platform browsers. As part of the framework, Telerik® UI for MVC by Progress enables the creation of fast-performing web applications.

“There are several .Net tools and controls out there, but Kendo UI provides the most programmer friendly interface via jQuery and AngularJS to create rich UI web applications. And we know clients like SanDisk cannot settle for anything less,” said Piyush Bhatt, CEO of AI Software.

The end application was built using HTML5 and jQuery-based Kendo UI controls, Telerik® UI for ASP.NET MVC by Progress, a web API and a service layer that uses a custom Data Access Layer specifically developed for SAP HANA. Featuring highly interactive grids, drop- down and tab strip controls, the application renders seamlessly in multiple desktop browsers and tablets and can forecast production numbers at various hierarchical levels. Analysts can maintain various versions of their forecasts and merge them into the final published version developed by the planning managers or VPs. The reports are published at the end of every quarter using BI tools such as Tableau, and released to a larger audience, including the CEO and other decision makers in the company.

“With the help of Progress technologies, the AI team built an easy-to-use application that is well integrated with the existing ERP/Data Warehouse. It was well received by business users due to its user-friendly UI, data accuracy and responsiveness.” -- Deepak Kakar, Senior Manager of IT at SanDisk

Three developers who specialize in .Net, Kendo UI framework and jQuery worked on the project. It took three months to completely develop and release the solution for production. AI Software also helped migrate the existing data from Excel spreadsheets into the HANA database.