COllaborative CO-creation of web Applications on the CLOUD

Project Information

COCOA CLOUD

Grant agreement ID: 699903

DOI

10.3030/699903

Project closed

EC signature date 12 November 2015

Start date 1 December 2015

End date 31 March 2016

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies - Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)

Total cost

€ 71 429,00

EU contribution

€ 50 000,00

Coordinated by

VAADIN OY
Finland

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - COCOA CLOUD (COllaborative CO-creation of web Applications on the CLOUD)

Reporting period: 2015-12-01 to 2016-03-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

COCOA CLOUD is a Collaborative cloud-based web Application Development Tool (ADT) that allows unprecedented real-time co-creation of User Interfaces (UI), and direct publishing on the cloud without the need of any coding. COCOA CLOUD will transform web software development, reducing application development time (30%), cost (50%) and complexity (50%).
Target users are mainly IT professionals working at two types of companies (our main clients): Medium to Large Specialized Web Application Development Companies and Large Organizations using web applications and with own Web Application Development Teams (banks, insurance companies, Universities …). Regarding the market development, in the first phase of the commercialisation plan of the COCOA CLOUD (2017E) our targeted users will be technical stakeholders of the application development project (developers, web designers, UI designers …). Gradually, the focus will be shifted towards non-technical roles (business stakeholders such as analysts, project managers and product owners), and to those, the advantages of the COCOA CLOUD in terms of application development’s cost reduction, team’s productivity, faster time-to-market, higher revenues and profits will be demonstrated through direct sales representatives and presentations. Our commercialisation channels include: vaadin.com (forum, blog posts, wiki, newsletter, notifications, Webinars), Free online technical resources: Tutorial, Book of VAADIN, Youtube official channel, etc., Periodic magazines: VAADIN Dock (The magazine of VAADIN), Press notes both in generic and specific publishing means, Online advertising (including pod casts), Joint marketing: i.e. Github, Participation in international Forums and Events, Participation in Trade Shows (Javaone and Devoxx Conferences, etc.) and Finnish national research programs.
With an initial investment of 2.2M€ in R&D in 2015, Vaadin will increase the spending to 2.8M€ in 2016 and is prepared to invest 0.6M€/year from 2017 and on. We have forecasted a figure of sales in 2022 of €100M and a profit of €35M that year, providing an IRR of 57%.The quality and options of the Designer and COCOA CLOUD, which will be commercialised using a Software as a Service (SaaS) model, will allow us to increase our ARPU from 46.86€ to around 89€ in 2022.
The necessary funding requested to achieve such objectives is €1.685 million for the whole duration of proposal.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

In order to confirm the feasibility of our project, we have carried out a 4-month study focusing our effort on three main areas. Technical viability plan which includes an in-depth analysis of (1) Integrating the Drag and Drop User Interface creation on the cloud, (2) IDE interoperability and (3) Optimization of output code (50% reduction of lines of code). This plan also includes a risk analysis for all technical activities indicating the mitigation and contingency measures to be prepared for Phase 2 execution. In addition, we have a conducted an IPR survey to analyse potential conflicts of COCOA CLOUD with existing products and the opportunity to protect and patent our investment. In the commercialisation plan, we have carried out an in-depth analysis of our market entry strategy (segmentation, timelines, marketing actions, resources, etc.) into the European and American markets. The financial plan is based on the technical viability report and the commercial plan. We have defined the license price, sales forecast, and estimated revenues from our product line and services. ARPU (Average Revenue per User) and Return of Investment analysis has also been included.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

COCOA CLOUD is an Application Development Tool that applies Agile and DevOps revolutionary software methodologies to web application development and allows all stakeholders (technical and non-technical) to work simultaneously on the working version of the software (UI co-creation), applying real-time changes and modifications, and supporting direct cloud deployment. The uniqueness of COCOA CLOUD lies in the revolutionary way the web application development projects will be approached. COCOA CLOUD will allow all the project´s stakeholders to work directly on the final version of the application without having to pass through intermediate products or prototypes. The core of COCOA CLOUD´s innovation is its revolutionary architecture linking the design phases to the implementation phase, resulting in a drastic reduction of development time, allowing “real time” feedback by all the stakeholders and super-fast iterations during every single phase of the project, ensuring the alignment with the project´s objectives at all times.
Therefore, COCOA CLOUD targets the following impacts on clients as compared to existing solutions:
- Shorter development time: As a consequence of avoiding the need of working on UI prototypes. Apart from that, the development iterations are faster since co-creation occurs in real time and clients and non-technical stakeholders participate directly on UI design and testing is streamlined. A 30% time reduction is estimated.
- Increase software quality. Most of the output code will be based on our tested and optimized Open Source framework aiming to reduce output lines of code by a 50%. Therefore, a reduction of more than 50% of bugs is expected due to smaller code files and a higher quality of Open Source Software (0.45 defects per 1,000 lines of code, while the industry’s average is around 1 defect per 1,000 lines of code for companies ).
- Improved customer satisfaction. Although difficult to quantify, customer satisfaction will be increased as a result of continuous feedback and prioritization that will facilitate risk detection and avoid deviations from client’s needs.
COCOA CLOUD unique selling points allow to:
1. Link the design phases with the development phase in the web application development project
2. Accelerate web application development by 30% due to the reduction of code lines, immediate transformation of the UI into code and constant focus on the project’s objectives.
3. Decrease development costs 30% to 50%, due to the smaller teams needed and less debugging time.
4. The only web development tool in which the work item is the working and final solution and can be deployed with just one click.
5. All work is done in cloud, enabling full-fledged participation from any location.
6. Unprecedented co-creation by all stakeholders throughout the lifecycle of the application, even those without any software development background.
Currently, 54% of our users are from the European countries, indicating that European clients will be important beneficiaries of Vaadin COCOA CLOUD – technically from the advancement of the innovation and economically from its impacts on the businesses. This new concept and its adoption worldwide will mean a better global position for Europe in the software industry as a pioneer in web Application Development Tools, increasing the importance of European software in the global market. Our product will be the preferred solution for end users worldwide due to its unbeaten features.

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