ImageX: A Year of Growth and New Innovations

We've been leveraging the power of Drupal for over a decade now. By its very nature, Drupal’s framework is in a constant state of evolution; feeding off its open-sourced stream of inspiration, creativity and problem-solving. 2015 was a year of significant change for ImageX and the industry at large. This past year also paved the way for several new and exciting projects to come for us. In the spirit of growth and change, here’s an overview of what our great team has been  focusing on, and what we’re gearing up for in the year ahead. 

2015: A Year of Growth and Loyalty

With a 40%+ increase in growth over 2014, and dozens of ambitious web projects, this past year has been an exciting one for us at ImageX. We’ve also broadened our roster of clients and partners, with brands like Samsung, Adidas, Apple, Zenoss, University of Guelph, Trinity Western University, Trinity University, Kent State University, Columbus College of Art and Design, Ambrose University and Southwestern Adventist University now proudly on our client list. The projects we’ve worked on have helped us deepen our expertise in Higher Education, Technology & Media and Mobile Applications.   

More than 40% of our 2015 projects came from existing clients - this is  a great indication of the quality and consistency of our services and work delivered. Our team shares gratitude to our family of clients.

 

CLIENT & PARTNER SUCCESS

To respond to increase in service demand, we’ve expanded our proficiencies and added new subject matter experts (see the ImageX Team below).  Most importantly, we continue to foster new relationships and strengthen existing ones with our long-time client family. In fact, more than 40% of our 2015 projects came from existing clients.  

 

OPENEDU:  PRODUCT & TECHNICAL SUCCESS

We’ve achieved an exciting milestone in 2015 - the development of our pre-configured Drupal framework, OpenEDU. Our new platform is scalable and flexible. We designed OpenEDU to support a successful web architecture with preconfigured functionalities for higher ed sites.

OpenEDU key features:

• Extensible taxonomies that support hierarchies between universities and colleges, to schools, departments, faculty members and course programs.  
• Unified API infrastructure for integration with all systems and softwares in-use by Universities.
• A sophisticated and flexible content workflow that provides multiple authorship roles and strengthens organizational content governance.

OpenEDU in 2016

We're planning to release OpenEDU to the Drupal community this Spring 2016 to begin using. Traditional EDU sites can be hectic and can often end up being a hodge-podge of different content management (CMS) platforms, plugins, layouts and infrastructures. Since our inception, we've worked with Universities housing up to 300+ internal departments within their system.  In several cases teams are working in different silos and tasked with the responsibility for their own content, functionality and layout. These silo traps are apparent throughout their web properties - from branding inconsistencies to tone and voice breakdowns. Valuable energy and resources are wasted by working this way. OpenEDU is already being used with incredible results for our  EDU projects like Trinity University, Ambrose University, the Columbus College of Art & Design, University of California and Trinity Western University to name a few.   

OpenMOBILE:  The Next Big Thing

  Now that OpenEDU is nearly out the door, we’re going to be working on developing our next big project: OpenMobile. Recent stats have shown that up to 60% of content is now consumed via mobile web or apps, so it’s important for us to stay ahead of the game and innovate. Mobile web application development can now be done using ‘headless Drupal’ to connect your website content management system with your mobile app using a single infrastructure. If you have a Drupal website, or are looking for one, and also need a mobile app developer, OpenMobile could be your solution by saving you the headache of managing two separate systems. When you have one back end system controlling content on your website and your mobile app, you’ll reap the benefits of not having to re-learn a new system, and not having to enter data twice. The familiarity of the Drupal back-end user interface (UI) can serve as your mobile app content manager as well. Stay tuned for more announcements on OpenMobile in the coming months.  

The ImageX Team: We’re Growing in a Big Way

Over the last year, we’ve hired some incredible talent to both deepen our existing expertise and expand into new areas and services. Chief amongst our additions is June Parent, our in-house senior Digital Strategist, Brian Pokojoy, Web BA & Project Manager who brings over a decade of experience during his time at the University of Calgary and Gareth Mason, Chief Operating Officer, a 25 year Technology veteran to help us scale and grow our efforts.   Along with these great teammates, we’ve added a host of talented and creative developers, UX architects, project managers and designers while continuing to welcome new team members with EDU backgrounds. We can now proudly say we have over 50 years of collective experience in Higher Ed on our team, which makes us the go-to provider for EDU websites and solutions.   

What’s on the Horizon for Us in the Future?

Expansion! ImageX has an eye to open satellite offices in the U.S. to serve our growing customer base. Plans are also underway to continue expanding our experience through new team members that bring diversity and new skills into the company.  It’s our way of making sure we're prepared for a future full of growth; fueled by an increasingly experienced, engaged and multi-faceted team – and it’s the only way for us to keep up the ambitious standards we’ve set for ourselves as a team. Are you going to be launching any EDU or web-based projects in 2016? Get in touch so we can explore new and exciting ways to collaborate!