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snapTOOLS
Over the course of StepOne's long history, we have encountered a number of "gaps" in the tools and utilities needed to make Mobile Solutions a successful IT story. Some of those tools are embedded within SNAP and are part of the application itself. Others stand alone and can be a tremendous asset for our customers. Those that stand alone are our snapTOOLS.
STEP-CE
In the very early days of radio-frequency spread spectrum mobile devices; low bandwidth, proprietary technologies ruled the landscape. This was particularly true of PROPRIETARY terminal emulators. These emulators provided better performance for end users on slow networks, but their protocols were completely custom and long since forgotten. However, there are still THOUSANDS of users still using the STEP emulator.
One of those emulators was developed by Symbol Technologies (now part of Motorola) and was called STEP - Symbol Terminal Emulation Program).
Realizing this discontinued software left its customers with a problem when purchasing a Microsoft Windows CE mobile device, Symbol contracted StepOne Systems to develop and market STEP-CE. 14,000+ users on 3 continents think this was a pretty good idea!
Rather than investing in an archaic DOS environment, our customers run their existing applications on modern devices, along with their existing terminals without application modifications. This migration path allows the customer to focus their development efforts on next generation mobile applications that increase business, rather than re-writing their existing applications.
STEP-CE is available for any Microsoft Windows CE platform running CE 4.2 or above.
SVTP-CE - The Next Generation of Mobile VT Emulation
Starting in the 1990's and continuing today, VT Emulation was often encouraged and supported by device manufacturers as the easiest means of bringing a legacy mainframe or server to their device.
What becomes a problem for our customers is that many of the early emulators included proprietary extensions for that particular manufacturer or custom escape sequences so the customer's programmers could do unique things with the mobile computer from their server applications (things you would never need to do with a desktop!).
So while there are a number of standard VT emulators on the market today for mobile computers, few are in a positioned to provide the core VT capabilities AND be position to extend it as needed. In fact, StepOne's verion of VT already supports all of the extensions created by Symbol Technologies in the 1990s. This can be particularly useful in unique embedded CE environments, like a wearable computer, where the customer needs some unique elements added to the VT core.
Package Manager
There are a number of software packages and services that provide management and updating capabilities for mobile computing devices. However, they vary in price and complexity to implement.
Often, our customers have not invested in an enterprise level device monitoring and management tool; however, they desperately need an easy way to update their applications and data. Introducing Package Manager.
Package Manager is a standards-based tool that leverages IP file transfer and Microsoft deployment tools to deploy/update software applications and to update local data on the mobile computer. This is not a full-blown management tool, but it does provide our customers with a simple, inexpensive tool for keeping their software up-to-date.
snapSERVER
snapSERVER is a high-efficiency store-and-forward server component that is built and optimized for transactions using mobile computers with varying communication needs. This message-based solution acts as a reliable transport and integration point for legacy systems.
The server is optimized for performance and reliable message exchange with the application on the mobile computer. This is critical, as our clients implement field devices and need to manage both the remote transactions carried over a WWAN connection and getting end-of-trip transactions at a depot via WLAN. It all works and integrates the same way.
This tool is typically licensed as part of an overall Field Service software solution (snapFIELD) that requires a non-SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) integration.