Still on the wave of success
On our third birthday, we look back on an extremely successful business year. All parameters – customers, employees, developments, projects, partners, and memberships – are pointing upwards.
In the various business areas, companies and organizations from the industry and the public sector were acquired as customers, such as Swisslex AG, the German startup Carbonfuture, the University of Basel, and LVM Versicherung. The number of employees was further expanded and now totals around 60. Almost 20% of our workforce is female, a high percentage in ICT companies. Additionally, the German branch, Karakun GmbH, was founded in Dortmund.
We are particularly proud of the launch of two new platforms: the HIBU platform and Lyzium.
The HIBU platform is a flexible platform for the efficient development of customer solutions in the areas of intelligent search and text analysis. It positions us as an innovative player in the growing Swiss AI landscape. Plus, we are now a member of SwissNLP, the Swiss Association for Natural Language Processing.
Lyzium is a Big Data platform for the analysis of measurement and simulation data in the automotive industry. Together with the acquisition of the German EXOKNOX GmbH announced a few days ago, the the way was paved for successful business in the automotive environment.
We can also report delightful developments in the products area: For example, the user base as well as the number of support customers of OpenWebStart, an open-source reimplementation of the Java Web Start technology removed by Oracle in Java 11, could be increased. OpenWebStart has been downloaded over 100,000 times since its release in 2019 and is running on an estimated 750,000 clients.
Likewise, a large number of new customers have been attracted to VOLTA. The cloud-based industry solution for the Swiss electrical installation industry was successfully expanded in terms of third-party system integration options, e.g. for time tracking.
As one of the founding members in the Eclipse Adoptium Working Group, we have successfully positioned ourselves as a Strategic Member. In addition to Karakun, members of the Working Group are industry giants such as Alibaba Cloud, Huawei, IBM, Microsoft, and Red Hat.
“We are extremely pleased with the developments and growth and look back with pride at the achieved milestones,” says Dr. Elisabeth Maier, CEO of Karakun AG. “When we founded our company April 1, 2018, we would not have dared to predict such rapid development. In particular, I would like to say thank you to all our employee. Without them, we would not be where we are today.”
Karakun takes over EXOKNOX GmbH
On April 1, 2021, Karakun AG will take over EXOKNOX GmbH based in Stuttgart (Germany). The German software company is one of the first start-ups to emerge from the Daimler AG innovation laboratory. All employees will be taken on, and the parties have agreed not to disclose the terms and conditions.
EXOKNOX’s offer is aimed at developers of technical systems such as simulation and test engineers or designers for whom functional component properties play an essential role. The software is considered a reference implementation of the FDX standard of the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA). FDX stands for “Functional Data Exchange” and enables a smooth exchange of development and simulation data between manufacturer and supplier.
“After a successful start in the corporate environment of a vehicle manufacturer, it was now important to find a partner with whom our product can be made accessible to the entire automotive environment”, says the old and new managing director of EXOKNOX GmbH Michael Baumann. “We are very proud to now belong to the Basel-based software company. Under the umbrella of Karakun, with his vast experience and know-how in software engineering, we will be able to make an important contribution to the digitization of development processes in the automotive industry.”
Hans-Dirk Walter, a member of the management and responsible for the automotive division at Karakun, explains: “We have been working very actively for some time on the challenges of digitization in the automotive industry. There is huge potential in this environment. Together with Lyzium, our Big Data platform for measurement and simulation data which was launched last year, we can offer an even wider range of solutions to simplify vehicle development. ”
Hello Adoptium!
We love Java, we love open source and we believe in the power of the community. This conviction drives us every day.
For quite some time, we are actively supporting AdoptOpenJDK, a community-based project providing Java binaries for a large number of platforms. What has already been announced at our Developer Hub in June 2020 has now become a reality: as of today, AdoptOpenJDK is officially Eclipse Adoptium.
Karakun is founding partner alongside major companies and organisations like Alibaba Cloud, Huawei, IBM, iJUG, Microsoft, New Relic and Red Hat as well as Strategic Member of this new Eclipse Working Group.
For more information about the Eclipse Adoptium Working Group please read the official press release. We will also post some news at the Karakun Developer Hub.
Karakun @ JavaLand 2021
On March 16 and 17, JavaLand will once again open its doors for the Java Community. Due to the current pandemic situation, JavaLand 2021 will take place exclusively as a two-day online conference.
Karakun supports this outstanding Java community conference not only as a gold sponsor but by actively contributing to this year’s program:
Breakfast TV
Live from the new JavaLand studio, Sandra Parsick and Karakun expert Hendrik Ebbers will welcome the developer community to the first ever JavaLand Breakfast TV. Sandra and Hendrik will take a look behind the scenes of the JavaLand and the latest open source activities and products.
Between the conference talks, this amusing format will also provide lots of interviews, interesting panel discussions and much more.
CyberLand Late Night JavaLand Edition
Sandra and Hendrik invited Melanie Andrisek and Alexander Naumann to celebrate the 7th birthday of JavaLand, the (quasi) 16th birthday of Java and the 4th name day of Cyberland Late Night. The event will be streamed free on YouTube. If you prefer a more interactive celebration, please register yourself. Be aware that available seats are limited.
Talks
Scrum im Homeoffice
Während des Lockdowns durch Covid-19 und die neuen Hygieneregelungen mussten viele Entwicklungsteams auf komplette Fernarbeit und HomeOffice umstellen. Die Scrum-Meetings, die ja sonst durch den persönlichen Austausch und die direkte Interaktion zwischen den Teammitgliedern geprägt war, mussten somit ebenfalls sehr plötzlich virtualisiert werden. Als Scrum Master habe ich mich in dieser Zeit sehr stark mit nützlichen Tools und Abläufen, die den Zweck der Scrum-Zeremonien auch im remote Setup bestens unterstützen, auseinander gesetzt und würde gerne meine Erkenntnisse mit den Teilnehmern der Javaland Konferenz teilen.
Jamila Mahler
Tuesday, March 16, 10:40 – 11:40, Silverado
Projekt Fugu (PWAs weitergedacht)
Mit der Definition von Progressive Web Apps (PWA) wurde Web-Applikationen die Möglichkeit gegeben installiert zu werden, offline-fähig zu sein und Push-Nachrichten an den Nutzer zu senden. Projekt Fugu möchte weitere Möglichkeiten hinzufügen und die Lücke zwischen nativen Anwendungen und Web-Applikationen weiter zu schließen.
In diesem Vortrag schauen wir uns die Inhalte von Projekt Fugu an. Welche Funktionen ( sollen hinzukommen, welche sind bereits jetzt, und vor allem wo nutzbar?
Zum Beispiel:
- Contact Picker API
- Native File System API
- User Idle Detection API
- Web NFC
- usw.
Simon Skoczylas
Tuesday, March 16, 12:00 – 12:40, Wintergarten
USE A LOGGER
Egal ob man eine kleine Library, ein komplexes Framework oder eine Anwendung für Endanwender entwickelt – Irgendwann kommt man an den Punkt dass man Information loggen möchte. Hier bietet die Java Community eine ganze Fülle an Lösungen: Neben dem java.util.Logging gibt es Libraries wie commons-logging, Log4J oder Logback. Wo liegen hier eigentlich die Unterschiede und Alleinstellungsmerkmale? Dazu kommt, dass ja eigentlich alle sagen, dass nur die Nutzung von slf4J “Best Practice” sei. Aber warum soll ich eine Abstraktion bei der Entwicklung einer konkreten Anwendung nutzen? Oder bietet slf4j vielleicht noch ganz andere Vorteile? Und als wenn das nicht schon genug Fragen wären wurde mit Java 9 einfach mal still und heimlich mit dem System.Logger ein neuer Logger ins OpenJDK integriert.
Dieser Talk gibt einen verständlichen Leitpfaden durch den Logging Dschungel und zeigt ein paar Praktiken, die helfen das Logging von Libraries und Anwendungen in den Griff zu bekommen. Wenn du kurz davor bist aus Frust doch wieder System.out zu nutzen ist diese Session genau richtig für dich.
Hendrik Ebbers & Stephan Classen
Tuesday, March 16, 13:00 – 13:40, Silverado
Women In Tech Panel
It’s an understatement how 2020 and even 2021 have changed our lives, and sadly some of our colleagues specially women had to face increase challenges. Java Champions, Ground Breakers Ambassadors and Luminaries of our Industry shared some of their career stories, concerns, ideas, suggestions in how to improve this industry and our approach to Women In Tech.
This is not only a space for Women In Tech but for all of us, because we all contribute to the Industry actively!
There will be videos a panel and a space to network! Don’t miss it.
Tech needs your participation!!
Ixchel Ruiz
Tuesday, March 16, 13:00 – 15:00, Hand-on Arena
Big Data and ASAM ODS
The amount of data being collected during tests and simulations has steadily grown in the past years with no end in sight. The automotive industry is not the only sector having the problem to cope with this sheer volume of data.
Techniques to solve this problem have been developed in other areas. Those are known as “Big Data”. ASAM ODS, the de facto standard for the management of test data developed by the automotive industry, originates from the time before Big Data and is being further developed independently. Only recently, there have been efforts to combine ODS and Big Data.
With Lyzium (https://lyzium.com), Karakun pursues a hybrid approach to immediately provide the possibilities of the latest Big Data technologies to existing data. We also examined three other approaches in a tech article published in the magazine Hanser Automotive.
A present for all of us
Climate change. Global warming. Greenhouse gases. These and many more buzzwords are omnipresent in our daily lives. And people are becoming more and more conscious about reducing their CO2 footprint and compensating for their CO2 usage.
Thus, we decided to acquire the ownership of a certified biochar sink porfolio on your and our behalf – a present for all of us. With this action, we financed the removal and sustainable storage of 50 tons of CO2.
We wish all our customers, partners and employees a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Visit https://carbonfuture.earth and help saving our planet.
Java Desktop 2020
In Java’s history a lot of different UI technologies appeared and helped Java to become an established technology for desktop applications. Especially the cross platform functionality of Java enabled a lot of mission critical desktop applications in industries like the aerospace sector, deep sea research, the stock market, and others.
As we all know the market share of desktop applications has gone down during the last decade. Next to mobile computing more and more applications move to web browsers. Based on this Java desktop technologies are not as attractive anymore as they were a couple of years ago.
Nevertheless there is still progress in Java Desktop technologies and a lot of positive changes and progression happened within the last 12 months. Together we will take a look at the current state of these technologies, how they evolved within the last year, and what new developments the future might bring for us.
This keynote presentation by Karakun expert Hendrik Ebbers has been recorded at JFX Days 2020 on Nov 24, 2020.
Karakun joins SwissNLP
Karakun AG is the latest member of SwissNLP.
SwissNLP aims to promote Natural Language Processing (NLP), Computational Linguistics and Text Analytics in Switzerland. The association brings together experts, solution providers and customers from industry and academia and organizes events and projects for NLP in Switzerland. SwissNLP is going to organize the upcoming Swiss Text Analytics Conferences.
AI (not only) for SME
Our in-house developed HIBU-Platform combines established and innovative technologies in the areas of enterprise search, language analytics and artificial intelligence (AI). Our customers benefit from rapid implementation of applications at budgetable costs.
Together with universities, we are validating new Deep Learning approaches that are ideally suited for SME as they normally have only a limited amount of data available.
Get in touch with us to discuss your individual project.
JFX Days 2020
JavaFX runs everywhere nowadays: on the desktop (Windows, macOS, Linux), on mobile devices (iOS and Android), in the browser and on embedded systems. With so many options it comes with no surprise that a lot of us get lost in a jungle of infinite possibilities.
The JFX Days are there to help. Due to covid-19, this year’s event will be held online but free of charge. Renowned and well-known speaker help you stay informed on deployment options, tooling, frameworks, open source projects, and commercial solutions. Plus, several real-world apps will be presented.
JFX Days will take place on Nov 24/25, 2020. Registration is mandatory. For more information about the event and the schedule, please visit https://www.jfx-days.com.
JFX Days 2020 are being organized by Karakun AG and DLSC Software & Consulting.
Together for a better future
Climate change, global warming, greenhouse gases – these buzzwords are omnipresent in our daily life. And people are becoming more and more conscious about reducing their CO2 footprint and compensating for their CO2 usage. And so do we as a company.
But reduction is not enough. We must actively remove CO2 from the atmosphere and store it sustainably to contain global warming. Thus, we are proud to announce that we financed the removal of our first ton of CO2 from the earth’s atmosphere for the duration of at least 100 years by acquiring 0.92% ownership of the C-sink portfolio Biochar Q2 2020 verified according to the European Biochar Certificate.
Are you also interested in removing CO2 but don’t know how? We recommend carbonfuture: an innovative carbon sink transaction platform, providing verifiable end-to-end carbon removal accounting and flexible trading.
For more info about carbonfuture, please visit carbonfuture.earth or read our case study carbonfuture: A focus on user and planet.
Bringing AI to SME projects
Customers interested in Language Analytics solutions typically approach us with a broad range of business cases and specific business needs. Gathering adequate, high-quality test data in order to train AI systems for industry use cases was a great and expensive challenge – until now.
We use advanced technologies to reduce the amount of needed training data to a minimum thus making AI projects attractive and affordable for SME.
We showcase our approach on Oct 5, 2020 at the AI-SDV 2020.
Important note:
AI-SDV 2020 will take place virtually due to the latest Covid-19 developments. For more information please visit https://haxel.com/ii-sdv. Registration is available at https://haxel.com/ii-sdv/AI-SDV/registration
Want to know more?
We would be happy to advise and support you in the implementation of your AI project. If you would like to find out more about us and our HIBU platform, send us an email to info@karakun.com or give us a call.