CBX Software Case Study

CBX Software helps retailers and brands to increase profit by simplifying their global sourcing operation, compressing supply chain cycle time and improving team collaboration, all through our cloud based Total Sourcing Management Platform. Over 20,000 users in more than 30 countries collaborate on CBX Cloud including: Target, Safeway, Kmart, ICA and may others.

The Challenge

CBX Software is demanding a comprehensive web application framework to enrich the web interface in a modern AJAX style, streamline the complex grid web form from multi-dimensional data binding in a rapid development approach. Some other major requirements are:

• Finding an enterprise-grade modern AJAX web application framework can be easily adapted to the existing CBX architecture and environment.
• Rich out-of-box UI modules, especially powerful in Grid support and control, yet remain flexible for customization through simple UI-Configuration.
• Performance optimization and boosting capability.
• Short learning curve, well documentation and support.

Why ZK

Extensive comparison exercises on major players in the market were conducted and the result on ZK is highly positive. During proof of concept (POC), the ZK toolkit could quickly be adopted and running in CBX development environment based on the well-organized developer guidelines and other technical documents readily available from zkoss.org.

Surprisingly, most of the requirements can be fulfilled by ZK grid components and controls out-of-box in the nice AJAX style; customized grid components could also be implemented without too much hassle. Not just from the feature perspective, but the MVC pattern, fully Java compatibility, support for leading architecture and more, all makes ZK outstanding in the list.

The Result

ZK is now the main web application framework at CBX Software. ZK enabled us to rapidly develop rich complex web user interface in a short period of time. Our flagship product being a total sourcing management platform, and grid components by default have to be used extensively for such application, but the ready-to-use components from ZK cater most of our business needs, and with the component customization capability from service-side component to JavaScript based client-side component really help to drive development activities more efficient, providing room for engineering efforts to be focused in business logics that benefit customers directly. We are happy to have ZK as our web framework.