The initial setup was straightforward. A few clicks and you're ready to go. It took us less than five minutes to install.

For maintenance, as far as the actual Windward product goes, it really doesn't need anybody. Unless something happens to the hardware, the server is just constantly running. The only time you would need somebody (from a support perspective) is if you wanted to make a change or add a report to the system. So, it is very low maintenance.

We did a proof of concept when I started a few years ago. It was not straightforward for me but I also had almost no experience with this whole integration of platforms and tools. It was the first time that I was integrating a new tool into an IT system that already existed. I was surprised that I got good results within one month, when going back and forth with Windward support. I was surprised that it worked out so quickly and so nicely. If I were to do it again today and I things might be more obvious, but I was surprised that everything was working pretty quickly.

Things that came across as complex included connecting with a database or installing the right forms on the server. They were technical things that you forget or you don't know how they work or haven't seen them before.

The setup is a continuous process. Until today, we are reconfiguring things, adding new functionalities. It never really finishes. We got the first version up and running after one month for the proof of concept and another month for implementing it into the actual product.

Our implementation strategy was "just do it." 

The easy part of this project was that it was a new project, so there were no documents being generated yet in an old-fashioned way. We do have customers running with our old technology, which we did not migrate. So it was kind of easy for this project to just implement Windward because there was nothing else anyway. Instead of going down a known route, we took an unknown route which turned out to work pretty well.

I'm not familiar with how the initial setup went. Remember, we embed it into our solution. So in terms of setup, that's something that our services team helps enable with clients as they set up our solution. Ours is a bit of a unique use-case.

The initial setup is as straightforward as it could be given the complexity of what it delivers. It took us nine months to set up but we weren't working on it 100% of the time. It was part-time.

Our strategy was first to do a proof of concept and demonstrations to warrant the investment in software. We had a trial license that helped me generate demos that were compelling and allowed us to approve the purchase order. Then we essentially demonstrated that we could emulate the manual method and therefore justify transitioning to the new method pretty rapidly. The next phase was to set up server-side processing.

The way we've implemented it, for our clients, it's basically plug and play. They plug it in and they run the reports through our software, and away they go.

For somebody to make reports or modify reports, there's a plug-in called AutoTag, that goes into Microsoft Word and Excel. It's somewhat on the technical side, so somebody that doesn't understand database structures might not be able to use it very well. It helps to have a little training, but they offer a lot of free training sessions, which helps.

The initial setup of Windward is very simple. The advantage of Windward is that you don't have to be a programmer to work with it. With most other solutions you already have to be a programmer to work with them. The installation is very quick.

The most important part is that we create documentation about how things are built up. If a certain chart is being produced on three or four different pages, documenting it properly will enable us to service it more easily.

We had originally estimated about six weeks to get it up and running but it took about three months. We have a unique application for it, so it did take a little bit more time. But it was well worth it, given the cost savings.

The initial setup was complex. I have a development team here on shore and they were working with the Windward team. We were trying to understand, because there was sparse documentation around the project product, what the best way was to merge the two applications together. That took a little bit of an "Act of Congress." There was a lot of back and forth. A lot of their team fixing stuff, my team fixing stuff. We finally got it going together.

In fairness to Windward, it was not developed to work with Validation Master, our system. But a lot of companies have APIs that are well-document and it's pretty easy for someone who has development knowledge to pick up the application and do what they need to do with it. That's where this would have been a lot easier, if we had that information. But we had to rely heavily on the Windward people to get us up and running.

Their being the good company that they are, and the good sports that they are, and the good technologists that they are, they were very patient with us. They ended up getting us up and running, and we've been up and running since that time, three years ago.

It was a classic third-party integration into an enterprise technology system. We had a roadmap, we had very specific features that we wanted to implement. We shared that with Windward. We originally tried to be independent of Windward, do it on our own, and that's where we ran into trouble. We found we couldn't do it without their help because some of their APIs just weren't documented.

From our side, we only had one developer working on it, so it didn't require an army of people. After it was deployed and configured one person has maintained it. We've had little to no real maintenance to update the system and make it work with ours. As we've updated our solution, they've rolled their solution in and made sure that they have kept up with it. We haven't had any challenges from that perspective.

I was responsible for championing it and convincing the CEO to make the switch to Windward. I decided to set up a prototype using Windward that mimicked our platform’s exact workflow, to show the viability of the product and process. The Windward prototype workflow was completed and demoed to the CEO in a single afternoon.

The utilization of Windward was very straightforward and I had a very good relationship with a few of the Windward support staff. Any complexity was purely a result from our end, as might be imagined when considering that I'm just the North American counterpart and all of this has to be coordinated with many servers across different countries.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. The solution is not very complex for what we use, meaning the RESTful service. All it required was one server to be set up with IIS and Microsoft Office installed on it.

We had a few little conflict issues that we had to check on with support, but those were specific to us. Overall, just following the instructions on their website, we were able to set up in a few hours or half a day.

Our implementation strategy was to first try it out. We did a bit of a proof of concept. We downloaded the REST API product and the demo of the report builder. We tested one of our templates with that, called it via an API call. Once we knew that that worked and it was delivering the results we were expecting, we went ahead and chose the product.

We also thought the cost was very reasonable, so we just went ahead and pulled the trigger on it. After that, we went into financial negotiations and bought the licenses to use the product in production. We then implemented the product on a more scalable server, one that was designed for production loads. We continued to test it and build reports afterward.

Initial setup is straighforward. Typical setup takes about 10-15 min.

The initial setup is straightforward. You just download it and click next, next, next. It took about ten to 15 minutes to deploy.

It was extremely straightforward. It's pretty much out-of-the-box. If you can use Excel or Word you can figure out how to create Windward template.

There is a learning curve, as with all things with complex pieces, when you want to get a lot more detailed. But we, with no official training, have been able to create some what I feel are pretty robust reports.

Straightforward.

It took us a week to get everything set up. It was because we were busy and could not focus on it. 

It was quite straightforward, I don't think we actually had any issues. We did put it on the test system to begin with, and we didn't have any issues that I can recall.

Simply drop in the WAR file. We had to do work on our end to secure the data we pass in to Windward.

The workstation deployment and license allocation was a pain, but the server component was easy. A salesman told us we could have concurrent usage license, that is also how the protection seems to work. Then they decided we could only buy named user licenses. Most of our user community used the product quite infrequently so we were far from impressed.

The setup was straightforward.

Initial setup was in between straightforward and complex. We had to do quite a bit of work to migrate all templates into Windward format and to build an admin panel to let our clients access the templates to update them.

The main issues were because our clients' own Word templates, that they had been using for manual PDF generation, were not very well set up. For example, inconsistent use of styles, mixed use of tabs and spaces to line up elements, and in some cases, including massive images.

It was straightforward, nothing complex.

It took a few days of self training and integration, but was straightforward.

The initial setup is straightforward.

Very straightforward. AutoTag takes some getting used to, but if you have used a report writer or a macro structure before it comes pretty easily. The production use is even easier. Literally just a few lines of code to delploy.

Setup was straightforward using Javelin Server (Setup using IIS7 & SQL DB) and AutoTag – Microsoft Office 2010.

• Straightforward setup of tool

It was not complex.

I'd say average. Not easy nor really complex.

Initially it was tough, but we’ve documented the proper steps for our environment and have a solid deployment process now.