We recently held a joint event with Sencha, Explore the Power of ExtJS for Rich Force.com Applications. If you were not in attendance, don’t fret, we have the highlights right here.

Arthur Kay, Solutions Engineer at Sencha, started us off by showcasing Ext JS 4, the newest release in JavaScript framework. Ext JS 4 can be used by software teams in conjunction with HTML5 to create impressive, visually rich web-based applications. In addition to this, Ext JS offers a variety of user interface widgets that are fully customizable and theme-able.

By harnessing the power of HTML5 and JavaScript, software teams can quickly and easily develop an application that can be used on any device. In a world where business is powered by iPads, various models of smartphones, and differing computers/laptops, the ability to have your app accessible by all of these devices is crucial.

Once Arthur wrapped up, Delivered Innovation CTO, Michael Topalovich, took the stage to tell us more about how to use Ext JS 4 within Force.com applications. Mike touched on the need in the market for providing real-time, in-context analytics within Salesforce and Force.com applications, and ExtJS 4 elements such as data grids and charts give us a simple and elegant way to provide this.

Moreover, architecture patterns for mobile and browser user experience (UX) are rapidly converging, and Mike showed us how Sencha’s frameworks can deliver a unified and rich UX across mobile devices. Their implementation of a Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture aligns with the Force.com MVC pattern, giving application designers and developers many options for creating rich, yet lightweight, applications that can evolve in lockstep with ever-changing business requirements.

The presentations were followed up with a networking reception, where attendees had the chance to discuss ExtJS and Force.com in further detail with an Oktoberfest in hand.

If you have any questions about this event, or have an idea for a future event, feel free to email Jessica Buhrman at jessica [at] deliveredinnovation.com.

Ford unveiled their Evos concept car at the Frankfurt Motor Show last week, a car that communicates with smart phone applications to improve driver’s abilities and safety. This could be used for basic tasks such as connecting to iTunes or Pandora, but also for more important tasks, such as scanning the weather and traffic reports in real-time to suggest other routes, detect accidents ahead, or alter the suspension and handling to fit the road conditions. Moreover, a car running on cloud computing can also be good for your health; “The car could monitor a driver’s heartbeat and see if he is stressed, and whether it’s a heart attack,” then the car would make a call for help. This concept is an exciting idea, and we’d love to see how else they connect to the cloud.

• Ford’s Evos Takes Cars to the Cloud

McKendrick names multiple reasons why cloud computing may revolutionize the economy. The cloud is opening up new opportunities for startups and information technology, even if you’re not in the IT business. For startups, it used to be the norm to invested thousands into servers and software. Now, however, all of that is in the cloud, easily costing under $100 a month, creating more of an incentive for entrepreneurs to start their business. Moreover, The rise in cloud computing calls for more software innovation, which leads to companies creating new services or applications, thus creating new jobs and revenue. In fact, even non-IT companies can become cloud providers and assist with could services, creating new jobs. So, is cloud computing just what the doctor ordered?

• Cloud Computing May be a Shot in the Arm our Economy Needs

On Wednesday, Salesforce announced that they acquired Assistly, a social customer service that pulls all of your social conversations into one place, saving time and improving your efficiency. With this acquisition, Salesforce can more easily reach a target they have not been able to reach before- small businesses. Benioff states, “The Assistly acquisition… [puts] us at the heart of a new trend in customer service help desk applications… expanding the potential reach of the Service Cloud to millions of companies around the world.” The deal was sold for $50M in cash, with an additional $30M in deferred payments over two years, totaling $80M.

• Salesforce Buys Customer Service SaaS Assistly for $50M to Reach Small Businesses

The Carbon Disclosure Project has unveiled some shocking cloud computing numbers. In the US alone, companies could save 85.7 million metric tons of CO2 annually by switching to the cloud. That’s the equivalent of 200 million barrels of oil. This move would also allow companies to save money and increase operational efficiency, a win-win for both the environment and the companies budget. Many of the companies that participated in this research, however, stated that “environmental performance was not their primary motivation for moving to the cloud,” instead, it’s time to market that is their main, driving force.

• Cloud Computing ‘can save millions of tons of CO2′

Perhaps you’ve been reading our blog and are already familiar with our event next week. However, for those of you who are not avid readers, Delivered Innovation and Sencha are holding an event next Thursday, September 29th at 2pm in downtown Chicago. Our event, “Explore the Power of ExtJS with Rich Force.com Applications,” will discuss how you can get the most out of Ext JS 4, the newest JavaScript framework, and use it to create rich, modern web applications that extend your value of Salesforce and Force.com. After the presentations, there will be a networking event complete with appetizers and drinks (beer/wine) to get to know the other attendees and presenters. The best part? The event is totally FREE. So come on out and join us and Sencha next Thursday! Register below.

We’ve teamed up with Sencha this month to bring you a FREE event, “Explore the Power of ExtJS for Rich Force.com Applications,” on Thursday, September 29th. As the title suggests, we will show you how you can utilize Ext JS 4 for creating rich, modern Force.com web apps to extend your value of your Salesforce and Force.com platform investments.

The presentation format is designed to encourage interactivity, so bring questions and be prepared to participate in the discussions. There will be a networking reception immediately following the presentation to give you 1-on-1 access to the presenters and to help dig deeper into Ext JS 4 and Force.com.

So head on downtown to our event on September 29th and join us in the discussion and get a free beer (or two) while you’re at it.

When & Where
Thursday, September 29th, 2011 from 2PM to 5:30PM
TechNexus ITA. 200 S Wacker Drive. 15th Floor. Chicago, IL 60606.
Conference room A/B

Schedule
Thursday, September 29th at 2:00PM. Conference room A/B.
2:00 Overview of the Ext JS 4 JavaScript framework and components
2:45 Overview of the Force.com platform and UI patterns
3:15 Real world examples of Ext JS on Force.com
4:00 Q&A
4:30 Networking with complimentary wine, beer, and heavy hors d’oeuvres

I am on a plane, returning from the 2010 Sencha Conference in San Francisco, thinking about all that transpired over the past few days. Delivered Innovation has standardized on Sencha’s ExtJS JavaScript framework for creating rich user experiences in Salesforce CRM optimizations and Force.com custom applications. My reason for attending the event was to get a first hand glimpse into Sencha’s vision for unifying their mobile and desktop RIA frameworks to give architects the tools to design stunning and highly functional user interfaces across all modern browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari) and mobile platforms (iPhone, Android, Blackberry).

My first impression upon arriving at the conference was that Sencha was using their investment from Sequoia wisely in pulling together what were fairly loosely coupled technical and business architectures to rapidly integrate branding and product management into a highly cohesive framework of tools that fell within a well defined and articulated vision, which drove equally well-communicated and managed strategies for achieving this vision.

My second impression was that the Sencha community was both robust and passionate. I was fully expecting attendance to be in the 150-200 range, and was somewhat blown away when there were around 500 people filling the Grand Ballroom at the Fairmont for the opening keynote. With the tone set for what would be a highly successful conference, I settled in and prepared to drink from the proverbial firehose.

The opening keynote was a comprehensive, rapid-fire preview of conference sessions and events, and it provided a window into the thinking that was being put into the Sencha mobile and browser RIA frameworks. I was very excited to see salesforce.com take the stage and demonstrate areas of Salesforce CRM and the Force.com platform that were leveraging ExtJS 3, including a Chatter application and a rich Apex logging interface. Glen Lipka from Marketo previewed some UI / UX design based on ExtJS that he would dive deeper into during his Tuesday session, which would turn out to be one of the top sessions of the conference. The Sencha team was also introduced, and the wheels were in motion at that point.

The session that I had circled from the moment I registered for the Sencha Conference was what most attendees also seemed to have been anticipating based on the turnout – “Introducing Ext JS 4″ by Ed Spencer. It looks like the next major release of the Ext JavaScript framework will deliver on everything I was hoping for, including improved layouts and charting / visualization, and will be delivered in Q1 of 2011. I can’t wait to get our developers working on a pre-release, which is supposed to be available to the community in about 6 weeks. We already do great things with Ext 3 and VisualForce, and from what I saw from Ext 4 we will be able to take Force.com UI design to a new level and deliver a rich and seamless Salesforce user experience across all desktop platforms as well as leading mobile platforms.

The sessions that filled out the remainder of the day on Monday were fairly technical in nature, providing previews and deep dives into the mobile framework and HTML5 (“Sencha Touch for the Mobile Web” by David Kaneda), improving JavaScript performance by managing complex layouts and event handler binding (“JavaScript: Advanced Scoping & Other Puzzles” by Doug Hendricks), and the data and API architecture of ExtJS 4 (“ExtJS 4 Architecture” by Ed Spencer).

As my attention span for keynotes diminishes rapidly from one day to the next, I skipped the Tuesday morning keynote presentation by AT&T CTO John Donovan. By most accounts I didn’t miss much, although I was disappointed to hear that nobody in the audience pressed him on how AT&T was specifically planning to address the elephant in the room – their oversubscribed and underperforming network. After all, how can you get a room full of iPhone, Android, and Blackberry developers enthusiastic about developing apps for devices on a network with a reputation like the one AT&T has earned?

My focus for Tuesday was to attend sessions related to the visual aspects of the ExtJS 4 release. Glen Lipka from Marketo set the tone for the day with an awesome presentation on designing and delivering beautiful UI / UX patterns (“Creating Optimal Desktop User Experiences”). Glen has fought (and won) many battles in his pursuit of optimal user experience, and his sharing of best practices and lessons learned was worth the price of the entire conference. And as an added bonus, I was able to add the word “webtop” to my lexicon.

The technical sessions on templates and theme management (“Advanced Templates for ExtJS” and “Theming ExtJS 4″) showed me how we can more efficiently design and develop reusable and extensible style elements for our rich interfaces built on ExtJS 4. Then came “Charting & Data Visualization” – I can only describe what I saw as jaw-dropping; the new charting capabilities in Ext 4 will be the “killer app” for driving adoption of the framework, and the best part is that the ExtJS 4 framework completely moves away from Flash for visualizations, clearing the path for us to design Salesforce CRM and Force.com applications with beautiful interfaces that extend from the browser to the iPhone and iPad. I closed out my Tuesday with “The ExtJS 4 Layout System” by Jamie Avins, which was the perfect bookmark to an intensely stimulating day; layout design in ExtJS 3 has caused sleepless nights for me, and I was thrilled to see the Sencha team acknowledging the difficulty and complexity inherent to Ext 3 layout management and taking ownership of the issue to ensure that layouts in Ext 4 would be much more logical and robust.

My attention span was spent long before I arrived for the final day of the conference this morning, but I was still looking forward to seeing ExtJS legend Jay Garcia give his perspective on Ext 3 design patterns and best practices. It was a good session to close out the day and the conference, and my brain is still buzzing halfway between San Francisco and Chicago from all of the stimulation this week. Congratulations to the Sencha team for planning, organizing, and delivering such a high-value conference, and I look forward to seeing how the product teams execute on the vision and strategy laid out over he past 72+ hours.