edgeConnect 5.0 has been designed to help businesses deliver larger and richer online experiences across a variety of channels and meet growing demand from end-users for more complex and fully-featured web offerings.

In a world of new generation devices and browsers, organisations with web presences are recognising that good customer experience is central to creating brand loyalty and competitive differentiation in an increasingly crowded marketplace. However, with a growing range of technology platforms and device types to cater for, the configuration process has become too laborious and costly and the ability to deliver a satisfactory user-experience has become compromised. edgeConnect has been deployed by businesses such as Allianz , LV= and ABN AMRO to configure sophisticated user-experiences across multiple channels, de-coupled from the constraints of their core systems, ensuring they can deliver a consistent and dynamic presence over the web.

edgeConnect 5.0 allows non-technical users to define and configure applications by hiding the complex underlying forms. Not only does this reduce wasted development cycles but it also enables businesses to react quickly to changing market influences such as regulatory or competitive movements. Through this approach, edgeConnect 5.0 has been benchmarked to show productivity gains of up to 85%. edgeConnect 5.0 further streamlines the configuration process by allowing applications to be developed in a similar way to a mashup. Component re-use - allowing portions of applications to be reused across numerous projects - has a critical role in this 'plug & play' approach, not only delivering greater flexibility in how an application is designed, but also ensuring duplication of development efforts is kept to a minimum.

Recognising the impact of Web 2.0 technologies and the use of Ajax techniques in driving the push towards richer online presentations, edgeConnect 5.0 supports a richer paletteher palette of graphics and components on individual screens. Users can create custom-built widgets and more interactive pages, allowing greater scope to create a uniquely branded experience. Because businesses will sometimes require functionality or capabilities within the platform that are not supported out of the box, edgeConnect 5.0 has been built using open standards, allowing deep integration with third-party development tools and libraries.

"User experience is at the heart of edgeConnect 5.0, both in terms of the platform itself and the online applications it is used to configure," said Dharmesh Mistry, CTO of edge IPK. "This version of edgeConnect delivers a comprehensive set of benefits, and significant scope for customisation to make the configuration process as straightforward and flexible as possible. edgeConnect 5.0 empowers non-technical business users to rapidly build web applications that differentiate a company through its online presence and breed customer loyalty. We see resounding evidence from our customers that this differentiation and quality of user-experience ultimately drives greater revenues through online channels, and edgeConnect 5.0 will accelerate this transition towards a predominantly web-based business model."

edgeConnect 5.0 is available now.