Jadu (company)

Jadu is a software company based in the United Kingdom, United States and Australia. It is also a proprietary web experience management platform used for non-technical management of web-based content, data and electronic documents.

Jadu
TypePrivate limited company by shares
IndustrySoftware
Founded26 November 2000
Headquarters
Leicester
,
United Kingdom
Key people
Suraj Kika (CEO)

Andy Perkins (Director, Engineering) Richard Friend (VP UK) David Evans (VP APAC) John Euston (VP North America)

Lee Pilmore (Head of Brand)
ProductsWeb Experience Platform (Web Content Management, eForms, CRM)
Websitejadu.net

Jadu also develops web applications related to document management, search and publishing. The company's global business is based in the UK under Jadu, Inc. (a sister company) based in Chicago, USA[1] and a business based in Australia servicing the Asia Pacific region.

Company history

The company was founded by Suraj Kika and Richard Chamberlain in 1999. The system was first developed for the Department of Trade and Industry (now Department of Energy and Climate Change) for the UK consultation portal for Oil and Gas and Renewable Energy.

The software developed for the Offshore-SEA website, an environmental portal managed by geological and oceanographic specialists Geotek, then became Jadu Content Management Engine Version 1 — and was implemented for scientific organisations in the UK as a means to publish complex electronic documents generated in MS Word and PDF formats.

In 2001 the system was redeveloped in PHP and MySQL and a Version 2 was deployed for UK Government and Local Authorities. Based on the e-GIF standards, and using XForms, the system was deployed at the beginning of the first acceptance and adoption of open source platforms within Government. Jadu as a company has a cross platform approach, preferring to develop its software to be agnostic in terms of operating platform and development framework.

In 2008, Jadu launched a .NET compliant binary of the Jadu CMS supporting IIS, MS SQL and the .NET 2.0 framework using the Phalanger which compiles PHP to CLR (Microsoft's Common Language Runtime) effectively enabling any PHP application to run natively under the .NET framework.[2]

Jadu have funded and are supporting the development of Phalanger, including leading the development of VisualStudio.NET support as well as other upgrades to PHP support in .NET.[3] With this new framework under .NET 2.0 and .NET 3.0, Jadu CMS can be extended in C# or any other .NET compiled language using Visual Studio.

Using the Phalanger compiler, Jadu CMS (or any other PHP based applications) and the front end web templates are compiled down to two DLLs.[4] - bringing together two fiercely competitive programming disciplines together - making PHP interoperable with the .NET framework.

Jadu's Head of Design and User Interface Lee Pilmore was the designer responsible for Lichfield District Council[5] becoming the first UK Local Authority to win a Webby Award Official Honoree status[6] and The City of Edinburgh Council website, which was awarded a top 4-star rating for three years running, as "the best Local Government Website in Scotland"[7] by SOCITM.

In 2007, Jadu's design for Kettering Borough Council (designed by Lee Pilmore) was nominated a finalist for the CSS category in the SXSW (South by South West) awards - for "pushing the boundaries of CSS coding technology, bringing together top-notch design and content with standards compliant and accessible code"[8]

In 2008, Jadu launched Manchester City Council's website using the Jadu CMS, which won the BT Online Excellence award as the Best Local Government website in Britain.[9]

In January 2011, executives from Jadu were invited to a private round table discussion with UK Prime Minister, David Cameron[10] to consult with Jadu over barriers to business growth in the UK[11]

In October 2011, the company announced the 'Weejot' Mobile web app publishing service. Described as a network for easily developing and publishing mobile web apps to handheld mobile and tablet devices in real-time using HTML5, CSS3 and JQuery Mobile.[12]

In February 2012, Jadu announced that their 'Jadu Universe Cloud' service, a platform for SaaS CMS, forms, search and mobile products was selected as a preferred supplier into the UK Government CloudStore.[13][14] On its website, Jadu stated that Jadu Universe Cloud services can be purchased by public sector organisations directly from Cloudstore without an Official Journal of the European Union tender process, which represents a significant step change in UK Government procurement. Chris Chant, the Cabinet Office Executive Director confirmed that the Government was "making it easy for the public sector to buy a vast range of services – and so easy that they can try things out at nominal cost before taking it on for a whole organisation."[15]

In the Spring of 2013, the Government announced that the G-Cloud has sold over £18.2m in products and services through the Cloudstore.[16] Jadu were listed as 13th most purchased services with sales approaching £250,000 in just three months.[17]

In March 2013, Jadu announced a partnership with PayPal to deliver mobile payments using the Weejot.com service, starting with mobile donations. Jadu, PayPal and The Alzheimer's Society co-launched 'Weejot Donate' a weejot.com template that enabled fundraising teams inside any charity to use the weejot.com mobile service to deploy mobile donations apps.[18][19]

Jadu launched a re-designed Manchester City Council website using its Jadu Universe Platform on 1 May 2013 as a result of a collaboration between the council's web team and Jadu.[20] The site was designed by Jadu's in-house 'Spacecraft' design agency using Responsive Web Design, reflecting Jadu's 'mobile first' vision for delivering web content to all devices.

In 2015, Jadu announced it had spun-out Spacecraft and created a new creative design company 'Spacecraft Digital'[21][22] so that it could focus on creating an ecosystem of channel partners and other agencies that could benefit from using Jadu products and technology.

In 2020, Jadu announced 'Spacecraft Digital' was changing its name to 'Jadu Creative'.[23]

Move to Continuous Delivery

Jadu collaborated with the Department for Communities and Local Government and Coventry City Council Chief Executive Martin Reeves to launch its move to Continuous Delivery, which the company said would save its Local Government customers over £2.5m in costs per year.[24][25] Early in 2016, Jadu renamed the continuously released platform 'Continuum' as part of a global re-branding programme. The company now releases its platform every 2 weeks, launching a new Integrations Hub in 2017, which is designed to make integrations with back office cloud and on-premise applications non-technical and faster for its customers.

Products

Jadu Continuum CMS (Web Content Management)

The company's core product, Jadu Universe CMS, is a suite of non-technical web-based content management application which covers publishing, directories, search, productivity and workflow, HR, e-payments, retail store management and e-forms.

In December 2008, Jadu launched the 1.8 version upgrade to the Jadu CMS (named 'Clearwater' by the company), which includes Semantic Web frameworks and a public API called 'MyJadu API'. The new version upgrade also introduced the concept of social 'directories' enabling structured data records to be either mass imported into the system and/or submitted by users of sites run by the Jadu CMS.[26]

In April 2009, Jadu announced a social media module for the Jadu CMS which provides integration to the Twitter micro-blogging social network. The Jadu Twitter client provides content management with drafts and workflow approval for corporate tweets.[27][28]

In April 2010, Jadu in collaboration with some of its customers, released an Election Results plugin for the Jadu CMS to its government user base to promote the use of Opendata in government. The plugin makes election result data available as RDFa.[29]

Jadu Content Management System itself is a proprietary system, although the company has Open Sourced many of its tools, including its User Interface Design System, 'Pulsar' which was introduced in a continuous release.[30] The Jadu Continuum architecture is cross platform and runs in Windows and Linux and is provided both on-premise and hosted.

Jadu Galaxies (CMS deployment system)

In 2006, Jadu developed the Jadu Galaxies content management system.[31] Galaxies (now a standard feature in the Jadu Universe Platform), provides the ability to clone CMS systems in real-time, creating a multi-tenant Software as a Service architecture and allowing customers to deploy their own CMS cloud services.

Jadu 'XFP' Continuum Forms (Forms deployment system)

Jadu XForms Professional (or XFP) provides a non-technical framework for complex forms development. XForms Professional connects to back office systems (such as CRM) and e-payments systems to enable accessible transactional forms.

Jadu 'CXM' (Cloud based Case Management and CRM)

Directly as a result of the experience of working successfully with the Ministry of Justice, Jadu launched the 'CXM' (Customer Experience Management) cloud service - a Case Management System designed for real-time collaboration on cases. The service is designed to help large organisations solve cases for customers, encouraging retention, but has its foundation in legal case management. The service combines 'instant chat' functionality with Case Management enabling real-time conversation to become case notes. Jadu developed the product as a multi-tenant cloud service, making the Continuum Platform a hybrid cloud product.

In 2016, the CXM service was adopted by The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead[32] as a direct replacement for their legacy CRM system. Just one year later, having launched the CXM service in mid 2016, the council announced it had made significant progress in transforming all its services to become digital.[33] This marked a move in the Local Government market to replace CRM systems for 'lite' cloud based CRM and case management.[34] Early in 2017 Jadu announced that a large number of large organisations has started implementing Jadu CXM, including Canterbury City Council, who stated it intends to provide 85% of its services online using the CXM platform.[35][36]

Notable users

Jadu's customers tend to be substantially sized organisations. Recently, Jadu announced the University of Leeds (one of the largest universities in the United Kingdom), who have signed a 10-year agreement with Jadu to deliver the Jadu CMS and Galaxies deployment system across the University, starting with the Leeds University Library.[37] The largest user of the Jadu Continuum Platform is Birmingham City Council, the largest Local Authority in Europe. Following implementation of the Jadu platform, Birmingham City was recognised in the 2017 Webby Awards as an Official Honouree.[38][39] Also notable are The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors.,[40] The Alzheimer's Society,[41] Manchester City Council[42] and the Edinburgh City Council.[43]

Socitm (Society of Information Technology Management), an organisation which tests and benchmarks Local Government websites for usability, accessibility and functionality, selected Jadu to implement their website, online forms system, online product management and integration to back office systems.[44]

Directgov, UK government's digital service for people in England and Wales announced that it was using the Jadu XFP online forms system to implement accessible online forms within the Directgov website.[45]

References
  1. "Jadu Heads to the US With Its Transactional Web CMS". CMS Wire. 30 July 2010.
  2. Har-Even, Benny (2008) "Jadu gets PHP and .NET talking", ITPRO, 2 December 2008, retrieved 7 December 2009
  3. Muncaster, Phil (28 November 2008). "Jadu brings PHP and .NET closer together". VNU. Archived from the original on 4 December 2008.
  4. Muncaster, Phil (14 December 2008). "PHP and .Net - a third way?". Information World Review. Archived from the original on 18 December 2008.
  5. Lichfield District Council
  6. "Lichfield District Council wins Webby Awards Official Honoree status". PublicTechnology.net. 2 May 2006. Archived from the original on 28 September 2007.
  7. "Edinburgh ranked best in Scotland for Council website". City of Edinburgh Council. 1 March 2011.
  8. "SXSW Web Awards Finalists". sxsw.com. 30 March 2007. Archived from the original on 9 May 2007.
  9. "Manchester City Council: Delivering 'best local council web site in Britain'". PublicTechnology.net. 7 March 2008. Archived from the original on 6 June 2011.
  10. "Cameron seated at table speaking to Jadu executives". ITN News. 5 January 2011.
  11. "Prime Minister consults with Jadu over barriers to business growth in the UK". 7 January 2011. Archived from the original on 13 July 2011.
  12. "Jadu Unveils Mobile App Creation, Publishing Service". CMS Wire. 12 October 2011.
  13. "Cloudstore: Government launches public sector app store". BBC News. 20 February 2012.
  14. "G-Cloud CloudStore Launches With 1,700+ Services for UK Government". CMS Wire. 21 February 2012.
  15. "Stand (Up) And Deliver – Can SMEs Handle It". HM Government G-Cloud Blog. 12 February 2012. Archived from the original on 23 June 2013.
  16. "G-Cloud celebrates three major milestones". HM Government G-Cloud Blog. 4 May 2013. Archived from the original on 23 June 2013.
  17. "Sales Information". HM Government G-Cloud Website. 1 May 2013.
  18. "Alzheimer's Society involved in launch of mobile donations app template". Jenna Pudelek, Third Sector Online. 26 March 2013.
  19. "Weejot Donate: giving charities the chance to set up their own donation apps in less than an hour". PayPal Blog. 27 March 2013.
  20. "Manchester City Council launches new website following consumer research". The Drum. 1 May 2013.
  21. Admin. "Changes at Jadu - we're regenerating! - Jadu Blog". www.jadu.net. Retrieved 2 April 2017.
  22. Kika, Suraj. "In Galaxies far, far away... Spacecraft - Mostly Harmless". www.jadu.net. Retrieved 2 April 2017.
  23. Brailey, Austin. "Spacecraft Creative becomes Jadu Creative". www.jadu.net. Retrieved 13 May 2020.
  24. engagement, UKAuthority.com - Digial public sector news, research &. "Jadu kills upgrade costs for its web platform in move to continuous delivery". Retrieved 2 April 2017.
  25. News, Emily Garthwaite. "Jadu software switch offers potentially massive savings for local governments". IT Pro Portal. Retrieved 2 April 2017.
  26. Harris, Jason (16 December 2008). "Jadu Updates Web CMS with Social Computing". CMS Wire.
  27. Muncaster, Phil (15 April 2009). "Jadu rolls out Twitter module". VNU. Archived from the original on 18 April 2009.
  28. Spick, Geoff (16 April 2009). "Jadu CMS Gets More Social With Twitter Integration". CMS Wire.
  29. "Local authorities adopt 'open data' standards for election result data". Information World Review. 29 April 2010. Archived from the original on 9 June 2011.
  30. "Jadu Kicks Off 2016 With A New UI". CMSWire.com. Retrieved 2 April 2017.
  31. Jadu Galaxies
  32. "Windsor & Maidenhead replaces CRM with 'Amazon-style' platform | PublicTechnology.net". www.publictechnology.net. Retrieved 2 April 2017.
  33. "Windsor and Maidenhead aims for 'touchless digital council' in the cloud". diginomica. 27 March 2017. Retrieved 2 April 2017.
  34. "Hounslow switches to cloud case management for CRM and digital customer service » Digital By Default News". Retrieved 2 April 2017.
  35. "Canterbury council aims for 85% of services to be online by 2019 - Government Computing Network". cloud.governmentcomputing.com. Retrieved 18 June 2017.
  36. engagement, UKAuthority.com - Digial public sector news, research &. "Canterbury takes case management to cloud". Retrieved 18 June 2017.
  37. Best, Jo (19 January 2009). "New CMS Leeds to uni's grassroots takeover". Silicon.com. Archived from the original on 20 January 2009. Retrieved 19 January 2009.
  38. "Birmingham City Council | The Webby Awards". Retrieved 18 June 2017.
  39. "Birmingham website scoops award » Digital By Default News". Retrieved 18 June 2017.
  40. Ashford, Warwick (29 January 2008). "Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors deploys content management system". Computer Weekly.
  41. "Charity launches new and improved dementia website". Alzheimers' Society. 13 November 2007. Archived from the original on 3 December 2007.
  42. Savvas, Antony (20 September 2007). "Manchester council launches 'high accessibility' Web 2.0 website". Computer Weekly.
  43. "City of Edinburgh Council partners with Jadu for 'world class' customer experience delivery". PublicTechnology.Net. 14 October 2009.
  44. "SOCITM selects Jadu as web transformation partner". IT Analysis. 17 September 2008. Archived from the original on 25 July 2011.
  45. "Directgov website to use web form solutions to boost online services". Information World Review. 18 February 2011. Archived from the original on 27 September 2011.
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