Multiview Saves Years of Development Time, Millions of Dollars Using Amazon AppStream 2.0

In recent years, Multiview Financial Software sales representatives heard the same question from customers again and again: When would the company offer a cloud version of its Multiview Financials application suite? Multiview, which builds powerful enterprise accounting and financial software used by thousands of customers across North America, knew it had to respond. “Close to 80 percent of new customers were asking for a cloud version of our Windows-based desktop application, so it was clear the market was shifting in that direction,” says Jamil El Ghazal, director of Technology Services for Multiview. “Unfortunately, we had no cloud solution to offer at the time.”

Multiview faced a choice. “We had to decide if we wanted to find an external solution to enable us to deploy our existing application over the web, or to rebuild our application from scratch as a web-native application,” El Ghazal says. “We knew rebuilding would take years, require significant focus on securing the service, and likely require a major investment. Either way, we needed to do something quickly, because we did not want to miss out on new customer opportunities that could come from offering a cloud solution.”

“Using AppStream 2.0, we had a SaaS solution overnight.”

- Jamil El Ghazal, Director, Technology Services, Multiview Financial Software

About Multiview Financial Software
Benefits
AWS Services Used

About Multiview Financial Software
Founded in 1990, Multiview Financial Software builds financial management software for companies across North America. The organization’s flagship offering, Multiview Financials, is used by thousands of accountants and financial services professionals in multiple industries.
Benefits
- Meets customer demand by delivering primary desktop application as a SaaS application
- Saves up to four years and millions of dollars in development time
- Reaches more customers and enters new markets
AWS Services Used

Using Amazon AppStream 2.0 to Deliver a New SaaS Application

To efficiently transition its service to a reliable and secure cloud service, Multiview chose to deploy its application through a web browser using Amazon AppStream 2.0, a fully managed Amazon Web Services (AWS) application-streaming service. “We wanted a solution that could provide fluid application delivery, easy printing, simple management controls, security, and reliability. Amazon AppStream 2.0 delivered all those things,” El Ghazal says.

Multiview now offers its graphic-rich Windows-based desktop ERP solution as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) application using Amazon AppStream 2.0 on AWS. Multiview uses an Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) to segment customer data and relies on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances to host the server side of its SaaS application.

The application is then delivered to a customer’s browser via Amazon AppStream 2.0. “We basically did a lift and shift of our application from our on-premises environment to AWS, because AWS provides the building blocks to easily create and support an application,” says El Ghazal.

The new application, Multiview Cloud, is used by thousands of customers in dozens of different industries across North America.

Giving Customers What They Want

Relying on AppStream 2.0, Multiview moved to a cloud-first software-delivery model and can quickly meet customer demands for a SaaS application. “Using AppStream 2.0, we had a SaaS solution overnight. We didn’t have to rebuild our application and rewrite a bunch of code,” says El Ghazal.

The new Multiview Cloud application gives customers an experience similar to the one they had on the company’s desktop application, without having to manage their own infrastructure. “Our customers benefit from using a graphically rich application with a lot of built-in features that provides them with real-time, actionable data to help drive their organizations,” El Ghazal says.

Saving Years of Development Time and Millions of Dollars

Instead of spending years rebuilding the application from scratch and bringing it to market, Multiview delivered Multiview Cloud to customers immediately on AppStream 2.0. “Without Amazon AppStream 2.0, it would have taken us up to four years to rebuild our application, and that’s being optimistic,” says El Ghazal.

Additionally, the company avoided spending millions of dollars on rewriting its app, because with Amazon AppStream 2.0 there was no rewrite required.

“It would have cost several millions of dollars to rebuild as a web-native application ourselves,” El Ghazal confirms. “That’s an important benefit of Amazon AppStream 2.0. Delivering innovative products at the best value proposition has always been a key principal of Multiview's service offering. The savings in time and money we realized from using AppStream 2.0 are passed directly on to the customer.”

Reaching More Customers

Multiview can reach more customers because of the faster time-to-market and agility of Amazon AppStream 2.0 and AWS. “Amazon AppStream 2.0 will positively impact our bottom line because we will be able to reach new customers with a cloud-based financial management application,” says El Ghazal.

“Additionally, because of the scalability of AWS and the Multiview application, our customers can quickly grow from two users to 20,000 users if they need to. Overall, we needed to react quickly to customer demand, and Amazon AppStream 2.0 enabled us to do that.”

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