Boston Globe Standardizes on the Mendix App Platform to Meet Diverse Application Needs Across the Organization

Newspaper publisher gains significant improvements in speed, agility, and IT/business collaboration as a result of using high-productivity app platform

BOSTON – March 18, 2014 – Mendix, the app platform for the enterprise, today announced that newspaper publisher The Boston Globe has adopted the Mendix App Platform to rapidly deliver dozens of new business applications that drive efficiency and innovation across the organization, including its newsroom, advertising, HR and finance departments. The first two apps – one for automating the process of managing thousands of freelancers and another for optimizing images used in print and online ads – were completed in just weeks, delivering immediate business impact.

The Boston Globe turned to Mendix to close the gap between growing business application needs and the limited IT resources available to deliver on them. Using Mendix’s rapid and highly collaborative development approach, the publisher is achieving significant improvements in speed and efficiency over traditional development methods. The platform is also allowing the Globe’s IT team to partner more effectively with the business in the development process, creating a more collaborative environment.

“Changes in the newspaper industry have forced publishers to look at new ways of doing business – and that includes the development of business applications,” said Wade Sendall, vice president of IT for The Boston Globe. “Using the Mendix platform, we can do things we simply wouldn’t have been able to do using traditional development methods because Mendix is so much faster and easier. The platform has allowed our IT department to become an enabler and change agent within the organization.”

IT leaders at The Boston Globe were initially drawn to the Mendix App Platform as a solution to migrate a number of legacy Lotus Notes workflow applications. However, they quickly realized Mendix met a much larger need – a single platform to address diverse application needs across the entire organization, including building new apps, automating manual processes, phasing out third-party software and migrating legacy apps. The platform’s intuitive, model-driven development capabilities will help business users not only collaborate on development efforts but also take over basic application maintenance, freeing up IT resources for other strategic initiatives.

“The Boston Globe wisely recognized that the only way its IT department could get ahead of rising business demands was to accelerate and democratize application delivery, empowering business users to collaborate and co-create with IT,” said Gottfried Sehringer, vice president of marketing at Mendix. “This vision simply would not be possible without the Mendix App Platform and our high productivity, collaborative approach to building applications. We’re excited to see just how much The Boston Globe can accomplish using our platform to execute on all of its application needs.”

Hear The Boston Globe’s Story at Mendix World 2014

The Boston Globe’s Sendall is scheduled to speak at Mendix World 2014, which will be held April 3-4, 2014, at the legendary Cruise Terminal in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Mendix World 2014 is the company’s biggest community event of the year, bringing together Mendix experts, developers and partners for an open exchange of ideas, tips and best practices. To learn more about the conference or to register, visit https://www.mendix.com/mendix-world/.

About Mendix

Mendix, a Siemens business, is the only low-code platform designed to address the full complexity of enterprise software development challenges. Deploying point solutions to departmental problems solves things at a micro level—but if you want to make a significant impact on your business, you need to go bigger and build powerful portfolios that move the needle sustainably and strategically.

With Mendix, enterprises can take on more complex, transformational initiatives by engaging everyone in capturing requirements, forming ideas, and embedding value assessment throughout the lifecycle of the software portfolio.

Focus on the right problems while relying on governance and control to avoid unnecessary risk. Mobilize your organization. Build the change readiness muscle. And when the next big idea drops, turn it into an outcome quicker.

More than 4,000 organizations in 46 countries use the Mendix low-code platform. An active community of over 300,000 developers has created over 950,000 applications – and counting.