Fastservers have picked up and posted an interview with Myself and ProActive: www.fastservers.net/blog/ – That’s nice of them ;-)
On a serious note though… www.fastservers.com are the hardware providers behind ProActive Software’s www.proworkflow.com/ product. We thoroughly recommend them if you need SAAS level infrastructure or mission critical hosting. The Fastservers team are complete professionals and work with you to build the infrastructure under your software business.
Take a look, give them a crack! You won’t be disappointed!
We are frequently asked about the company that started www.proworkflow.com and how the solution and company came into being. Rather than rehash the story each time, I’ve outlined the story below in the form of an interview. If any editors are reading, feel welcome to contact me (Julian) through the ProWorkflow.com website if you’d like to publish this interview or want a new angle.
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An Interview with ‘ProActive Software’ How did ProActive Software first start up?
The need for a project, task and time management system came from an earlier business operated by myself. I wanted to keep track of projects in my creative design agency.
I created a tool on a Palm pilot that worked great for me, but no others could access it. I enlisted the help of a developer – Alan Barlow (Co-director) to create a web based application for our team. Alan became my business partner in all this… We realized others could use it too and began to commercialize it for sale over the web. It sold well from day one and ever since it’s been growing!
ProWorkflow is now our core focus and has become a healthy fast growing independent company.Where did the idea come from?
The idea came from a need in my own business. I personally designed the first product (Alan wrote the code). We have personally designed and built the product, documentation, website, business systems and all other associated aspects of the business without any outside assistance.
The other week was the evening of the PriceWaterhouseCoopers Hitech Awards. As per a previous blog, our company ProActive Software (makers of www.ProWorkflow.com) were nominated as finalists in the ‘2006 PwC NZ Hi-Tech Awards – Innovation of the Year category!’. Unfortunately, we didn’t win as there were some other talented entries, but just to be nominated was a great honor in itself. Our category was jointly awarded to: Optima Corporation & Telemetry Research Limited. Right Hemisphere took out the ‘Supreme Excellence Award’ – http://www.hitech.org.nz/news/2006-winners.shtml
They put on a great event, fantastic food, scantily dressed dancers and the Prime Minister (Helen Clark) even made a speech. She also insulted 1/2 the room with a particular comment I don’t think she realized she’d said, but still it was a great night!
As my pregnant wife stayed in Christchurch, I had the freedom to ‘work the room’ and met some of New Zealand’s best and most successful tech talent. The wealth of knowledge and experience in the room was incredible.
At our table was Alan Barlow (business partner above, in Tux), his wife Kim, Myself (Orange tie above), and my parents Grant and Diane.
A great night was had by all! I give it a 10/10 rating!
Recently, I was interviewed by one of our countries largest lifestyle magazines – North & South. They were doing an issue of professional businesses that operate from home. ProWorkflow (ProActive Software Ltd) is a global business with thousands of users around the world. The Servers and hardware vendors are in California at Fastservers, but the ProActive Team is a geographically distributed team operating from New Zealand. Read the rest of this entry »
The new version of our highly acclaimed www.proworkflow.com called the ‘Enterprise’ release is nearly ready to launch. The Enterprise release is currently developed, in testing with some live client site implementations and should be commercially available around the end of November 2006.
ProWorkflow is a project task and time management tool designed to help studios, teams and individuals. The ‘Enterprise’ release does all this and more! It can also manage groups, country divisions, roles, and complex workflow environments. The tool is also customizable ‘per team’, yet the same tool can manage all the teams in a huge multi-divisional, multi-country, multi-currency environment.
Simply put, ProWorkflow can manage a design or tech team at a studio or agency. ProWorkflow ‘Enterprise’ can not only do the same, but also manage all the other branches and divisions of that company, all through the one installation and login! It’s really powerful and to the best of our knowledge, there is no other solution like it on the market today.
I’ll add more posts as the product becomes ready to launch.
