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Pepsi Bottler Goes Mobile With .NET
Microsoft Mobility Developer Conference, March 20, 2003 Today, amidst both high-level discussions and in-depth drill-downs on emerging Microsoft technologies, one early Microsoft .NET Compact Framework adopter team sat down to talk with Visual Studio Magazine about their experience, which was also highlighted in Bill Gates' keynote yesterday. "We could not have built our application, particularly not in this timeframe, without Visual Studio .NET and the .NET Compact Framework," said H. Paul Hamilton, Vice President of Supply Chain Logistics and Technology for The Pepsi Bottling Group, based in Somers, N.Y. The Pepsi Bottling Group is the largest Pepsi bottling company in the United States, said Hamilton, with more than 55 percent of U.S. market share and a presence in Canada, Mexico, Russia, Spain, and more. Hamilton and colleague Raymond Brown, Director of Supply Chain Technologies, explained their company's challenge: to replace aging "four-pound bricks" of mobile devices as well as a cumbersome, paper-based system of communicating sales programs, sell sheets, and other sales tools. Explained Brown, "We had to provide better tools to our 12,000 sales and delivery people—our front line. Our old applications were very invoice-centric, only replacing paper forms. They didn't do anything to support sales." If they were going to replace both the aging devices and the aging, "invoice-centric" applications, they wanted more than a simple update. Instead, they wanted to find a solution that could also provide sales tools to their mobile "front line." Not only did they get a custom-built Pocket PC 2003-based device from Symbol Technologies (now part of Symbol's regular product line) in less than six months, but the application itself was also rapidly developed. That's when they called Shelflink, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based solutions provider. Shelflink had experience with both distributor business automation and mobile device development. According to Shelflink's Nate Quigley, their early experience with embedded VB didn't deliver what they needed—but the .NET Compact Framework did. The group explained to Visual Studio Magazine that using Visual Studio .NET, they were able to develop their custom solution rapidly. Because of the .NET Compact Framework's component-based architecture, explained Quigley, they were able to set individual teams on individual components, developing the application's components in parallel, not serially. Also, the component-based architecture enables, say, the UI components to be built in Visual Basic .NET while the application logic is written in Visual C# .NET. One additional benefit, Quigley explained, was that "the process of development took us to some of the answers. The .NET Compact Framework made it possible to rapidly iterate." They were able to modify particular components frequently without affecting the other parts of the application. While both Shelflink and The Pepsi Bottling Group are happy with the results, Quigley has a few words of advice to Visual Studio developers pondering .NET Compact Framework projects. "Don't get caught up in the language debate," he said. "We'd probably still be arguing VB vs. C#. Believe the marketing: You can use both without a performance hit." Hamilton added, "It's not just languages—this application brings together our Microsoft technologies as well as our Sybase database and IBM technologies." One final word of advice from Quigley: "Be prepared to extend the control library." Shelflink rebuilt several of the basic controls, including the grid control. The bad news, as Quigley explained it: The .NET Compact Framework does not sport a strong library of controls. The good news? It's straightforward to build your own. About the Author |
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