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May 20, 2019
Did you know that in the U.S. alone, there are about 3 million miles of natural gas pipelines?
These lines deliver trillions of cubic feet of natural gas each year to 75 million customers, making compressed natural gas (CNG) an essential energy source for a quarter of the country.
In between these pipelines are compressor stations. These facilities help compress the gas to a certain pressure so it flows safely through the pipe to its designated recipient.
That’s where CNG compression equipment businesses like J-W Power Company come in. This is their story and how they used Caspio’s low-code platform to overcome a shortage of in-house IT resources.
Schedule a free demo to see how Caspio helps IT teams deliver custom web applications without coding.
J-W Power Company operates the largest privately owned CNG compression fleet in the country. Based in Dallas, TX, they are one of the leading companies involved in the leasing, sales and servicing of natural gas compression equipment. They’ve been providing compressor and maintenance packages since the late 1960s.
In the past, the company has weathered divestitures and workforce adjustments, particularly in their IT department, due to movements in the natural gas industry.
“This presented a challenge in meeting the demand for custom homegrown applications while not having the resources in-house to meet that,” said Applications Manager Paul Woolsey.
J-W Power then started looking at low-code development platforms like Caspio to augment their short-staffed IT department.
Eventually, J-W Power chose Caspio as their web app development platform due to its ease of use, robust IT-approved features and cost-effective price point.
Woolsey and his team wasted no time trying out Caspio’s innovative low-code platform—quickly developing and customizing web applications.
“It was very easy to create an application using Caspio. You could simply take a spreadsheet—that you’re using to manipulate your data or to provide simple workflows—and import that spreadsheet directly into the Caspio workbench,” Woolsey said.
“Just manipulate that using a DataPage and you can create a full-fledged application immediately,” he added, explaining how IT teams can use it for fast web app development.
Aside from superior Excel integration, Caspio’s versatility also impressed Woolsey. He described the Caspio Application Platform as the “best of both worlds,” saying it can work for technical IT staff and tech-savvy business developers alike. While Caspio’s intended audience is a business user with little to no coding experience, expert programmers are able to easily inject code to customize their applications, he added.
After completing their first app with Caspio in a month, J-W Power kept their momentum and deployed 15 apps to 650 users within six months. Many more are in the works.
“We picked up Caspio on day one and just started using it and deploying,” Woolsey said, emphasizing that if IT teams want to clear their backlog using low code, they need a change in perspective.
“Don’t dilly-dally. This stuff is fast!”
Woolsey noted that unlike in traditional software development where you typically organize analysis and requirements gathering meetings, assign teams, form project timelines and hold more follow-up meetings, you don’t need to comply with numerous steps before you get started developing with low code.
He recommends quickly setting up DataPages using Caspio, and then sending the prototype to stakeholders to get their immediate feedback. Show them your progress and correct mistakes as you go along.
To further expedite their app development, Woolsey and his team took advantage of advanced Caspio features, including SAML single sign-on, Box integration, Triggered Actions and Scheduled Tasks. He created a data warehouse within Caspio that, until now, enables his team to reuse master-level data from one app to another.
Because Caspio is an online database platform, everything is cloud-managed. This means businesses can quickly deploy and scale their applications without having to acquire and maintain additional internal infrastructure. “Infrastructure departments are going to love that. It’s all hosted externally,” he said.
On top of that, Caspio’s price point also makes it ideal for J-W Power Company.
Woolsey said they received quotes from almost every low-code platform provider, but only Caspio was able to offer them what they’ve been looking for: a pricing plan suited to their business needs.
Unlike other providers in the market, Caspio is not priced per-user. This means you can grant more and more people access to your application without having to pay additional fees for each new user.
Caspio clearly hit all the sweet spots for Woolsey and his team.
“As far as recommending Caspio to peers and colleagues, I could not recommend it enough. Caspio, for us, was a no-brainer.”Paul WoolseyApplications Manager, J-W Power Company
“As far as recommending Caspio to peers and colleagues, I could not recommend it enough. Caspio, for us, was a no-brainer.”
Interested in learning how you too can leverage Caspio’s powerful low-code platform to augment your in-house IT team? Want to start clearing your backlog of custom application requests but don’t have the extra talent and infrastructure?
Schedule a free demo with one of our experts today to discover how you can make it happen with the help of Caspio.