Twenty Years of YMS
YMS and Technology Before and After the Millenium
Beginning after the Velvet Revolution
After the division of Czechoslovakia, when the Slovak part of the gas tranmission network was being formed, Mikulas Szapu sr. grabbed the new opportunity. How else make the work of technical maintenance more efficient, than by using electronic maps of all pipes? Straight after the velvet revolution YMS started to develop geographic solutions known as GIS. At that time they looked like autonomous programs working independently on different computers. It is quite difficult to imagine today, but ten years before the millenium programs only used those data that they found on the harddisk of own computer.
The Network Revolution and Giant Databases
Towards the millenium, electronic maps in GIS started to look more attractive and the birth of computer networks caused a revolution. Desktop computers in isolated offices suddenly gained access to data on other computers and where it was possible people stopped wasting their time with updating their own files. Databases made a grand antry and they enabled companies to centrally store, update and work with large numbers of different data.
The Move towards the User
Followed a period of perfecting geographic technologies and common databases, which still remain one of YMS flagships. Already then YMS equipped its solutions with a central "storage" of geospatial information. This was followed by a user-friendly interface, yet the solutions still worked as independent programs, which one had to download and install onto each computer. Rise of GIS technologies pressed on electronic document management in companies and YMS developed its first solutions for digital archive and electronic work with company documents.
The Internet Boom
Close before the Y2K internet became integral part of work and computer networks became dominated by so called "web servers", meaning data storages in the internet and on internal company websites, intanets. Gradually, data and programs from desktop computer harddisks moved onto these servers. End user's computer got "cleaned up" and started to display only the information that one just needed via an internet browser. At the time YMS implemented the "web map" technology into its GIS solutions, the so called internet map and widened its portfolio by adding a solution for managing preventive and corrective maintenance.
New Millenium, Integrated
YMS passed into the new millenium focused on integration, meaning interconnecting independent company systems and solutions. Efficient sharing and using company information became the priority, as well as "cleaning up" work processes from activities that did not bring any added value. YMS came with the term ITIS, meaning the integrated technical information system, philosophy of which accompanies YMS until today. In 2001 YMS organised the first in a line of annual country ITIS conferences, which widened the proven tradition of GIS conferences and put YMS among top IT companies.
Turnkey Solutions and the Development of "Real Time"
After cleaning and connecting company IT systems YMS focused on developing turnkey solutions for specific clients. These solutions came out of precise clients' work processes and thus solved their specific information needs. Result of such partnership - since this had already been much more than just installing programs - had always been an intelligent system, which did exactly what the customer needed. Around the same time real-time technologies began to develop. These technologies monitor the development of information in time, regularly change data in the databases and thus only display actual state of things on the screen of the user. Real time fitted nicely into YMS portfolio, and YMS quickly came with solutions focused on localising people and objects in time and on the map.
Birth of "SOA" and the Great Mobile Revolution
Recent development of solutions climaxed in the so called SOA - service oriented architecture, meaning that company systems are being organised to offer "information services" to users. It means that information are "at the right place and in the right time" without users having to know how to get them there. Company data and documents are available to all programs, which choose themselves what they need to complete a particular task. User then only sees such processed information on the screen that he or she needs to perform ones duties. Simplicity or intuitiveness of using such solutions is greatly complemented by the today's mobile revolution. YMS did not lag behind the digital mania and offers to its clients the opportunity to "take" company systems out of the office via laptops, PDAs or mobile phones. Moreover, YMS solutions are perfectly compatible with other systems and so tailoring a large and complex company system consisting of different applications and modules has never been easier.
