Teknion Goes Cloud-First with Minimal User Disruption by Moving to OpenEdge 12

Teknion, a global designer of furniture for the modern office, doesn’t adhere by the old rule, “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.”

Known as an innovator in the world of furniture, Teknion supports a versatile and integrated portfolio of furniture that works wherever its customers work. The company is passionate about pushing the boundaries of furniture design so its customers can create workspaces that fit their unique culture.

This eye for innovation goes beyond furniture—it’s core to everything Teknion does, including its use of technology. The company relies on a powerful suite of custom-built applications, called Order-to-Cash, to handle everything from catalog preorder to delivery logistics.

Teknion wanted to shift to a more cloud-centric strategy so they could better respond to different market demands. However, this transition needed to be seamless to avoid disrupting for all the employees and partners using the suite.

Built on the Progress® OpenEdge® application development platform, Teknion decided the best way forward was to upgrade from OpenEdge 10.2B to OpenEdge 12.0.

Notably, the launch of Progress Application Server for OpenEdge (PASOE) made this path especially attractive. PASOE offers a scalable, cloud-ready application server that simplifies application management and improves communication with modern on-prem and cloud-based systems via the ability to open REST calls.

With OpenEdge 12.0 and PASOE, Teknion could run the Order-to-Cash suite in a private cloud while continuing to make the most of their OpenEdge investment. According to David Gowe, Director of Business Applications at Teknion, this was critical since the OpenEdge database provided Teknion with several benefits that other databases just couldn’t match.

“The Order-to-Cash suite is no longer just a Progress app,” Gowe said. “It’s a collection of technologies that enables us
to run an app from anywhere. In that regard, OpenEdge and PASOE is an equal player, if not better, when adopting a cloud- first strategy.”

While embracing PASOE made it easy for Teknion to move Order-to-Cash to the cloud, that was only one part of the application evolution process. Teknion also used Progress Kendo UI® to modernize the user interface for the web app.

Additionally, as a part of the move, Teknion went from a traditional standalone database to a replicated database. Progress Managed Database Administration (MDBA) assisted in this process, providing Teknion with a dedicated DBA to prevent downtime after the transition.

By embracing a cloud-first approach, Teknion has been able to dramatically improve the way they manage the Cash-to-Order suite.

Not only did PASOE facilitate the interconnection of different on-prem and cloud-based technologies to improve scalability and simplify management, new ABL language features in OpenEdge 12.0 also enabled Teknion to rewrite and modernize the actual application code.

All of this was done with minimal disruption to Order-to-Cash users, which was critical given that many Teknion partners and furniture dealers relied on these apps for their business.

“The end user was our main focus,” Gowe said. “They did not ask for an upgrade, but we wanted to provide them with new opportunities. Change management has to be zero so they can keep doing what they were doing.”

The combination of OpenEdge 12.0, PASOE, MDBA and Kendo UI made it possible, setting up Teknion to thrive in the new cloud-centric world without disrupting users.

“People tell me, ‘I don’t know what you did, but the application moves fast,’” Gowe said. “This is great, because it shows me that the app not only does what it needs to do, people are actually eager to use it.”

About Teknion

Teknion’s designs work across boundaries. Within any architectural envelope and work culture—products that work wherever you work.