After years of R&D at our Noida-based delivery center, Prospus is pleased to announce the release of our sixth product, Prospus Universe. Universe is the unique creation of investor, software inventor, and Prospus Founder Marc Ragsdale. “I’ve been working on this project, in one shape or another, my entire adult life”, he said. Universe aims to change the way we think of software by rebuilding it from the ground up. It can be used to build applications that all work within a single, universal user interface; however, that only scratches the surface of what the platform is capable of.
Prospus Universe was hatched over five years of research and development by Ragsdale. In truth, it is the fourth iteration of a tool that he has been working on since 1999. Initially, it was a project management tool making use of the early JavaScript libraries that were starting to pop up in 2011. By 2012, the second version of the tool had emerged; a full ERP for a software development company which is still used to run Prospus to this day. In 2015, Ragsdale led the charge to build the third version, which came to be known as Prospus Quality. “Each of these iterations taught me something new about the technology I was trying to build”, Ragsdale said.
The fourth version, that we are pleased to announce today, takes some of the features from each of these tools we built. The first two iterations gave us the basic “node” structure, including the unique, multi-dimensional database system Ragsdale conceptualized. “At some point, database systems run into a limit of what they can store. Once you define an element, such as an object, it is sort of fixed. I had to overcome that so that we could, in theory, store an infinite amount of descriptive data about any element in the system”, Ragsdale wrote in his early treatise on complex multi-dimensional data storage systems. The result was the “nodebase” — a completely unique way of layering together dimensions in order to create evolving elements.
Prospus Universe aims to cut both the development cost and timeline by 95%. Initially, we will target a 25% savings in both time and labor, but with the introduction of smarter algorithms and machine learning, we expect the results to improve. Early tests are promising, and the tool has been picked up as a non-labeled back-end platform by several of Prospus’ clients. The initial target market for the branded Prospus Universe solution is investment funds and accelerators that are interested in rapidly building out functional solutions with a minimal investment. Universe is perfect for this purpose because full solutions can be built in relatively low amounts of time. Prospus Universe provides a number of key functionalities out of the box, including:
- Rapid Application Development Environment. A browser-based, integrated development environment for building and running micro-solutions called “courses”.
- Universal User Interface. A single, standardized user interface based on years of R&D from building enterprise and consumer-facing apps.
- Integrated Marketplace. A single play to buy, sell, trade and share course templates within your company or community.
- Mobile-Ready. A progressive web app that can readily consume any type of course built within the Universal development environment.
Prospus Universe is built around the concept of the “digital body” pioneered by Prospus President and Founder, Marc Ragsdale. “As we head down this connected path, we will need tools to interact in the emerging digital layer. I have labeled this the ‘digital body’ – a set of essential digital accessories and appendages for interacting in the digital environment”. Ragsdale sees this initial release as a very early effort to gauge interest and get real-world user feedback. “Our goal is not to release to the broader market right now; there is a lot of power in this platform, and we want to see what we can do with it”, he added. Prospus’ plans to approach investors for additional funding in late 2018, to early 2019.
As businesses look to alternatives to costly, traditional development, Prospus aims to provide a solution. Universe will not be made available for general use. The first users will be invite-only, and enterprises interested in harnessing the power of this revolutionary platform in this early stage. Prospus is providing attractive incentives for organizations who are willing to incorporate Universe into their architecture, including full support, reduced licensing costs for five years, and early access to our SDKs.
If your business or fund is interested in a low-cost way to develop functional applications, consider Prospus Universe. Universe is only available on an invitation basis through Prospus directly. Learn more about Prospus Universe, or schedule a demo by contacting us at solutions@prospus.com.
