From the Desk of the President To Our Friends and Valued Customers, Each year as I sit back and set to work on my annual year-end letter, I find myself amazed at how quickly the past year has gone by. It seems they pass more quickly each year! This year is particularly special as we mark the 20th anniversary of AVAware incorporation in 1996. I recall the many people that came and went over the course of twenty years; talented professionals, whom I was proud to call colleagues and friends. They all brought their own skills and insights to our development work, and many of their contributions and influences still exist in our products today. When my co-founder Steve Rendulic and I began AVAware those many years ago, we did so with an apparently simple vision in mind; to deliver high quality and innovative products, while providing an exceptional level of service. As we’ve all come to realize, this is much easier said than done. I am proud to say that with the assistance of a talented and dedicated team of people, I believe we have succeeded. The easiest thing in the world to do, after so many years of operation, is to sit back and rest on our past achievements. It’s inspiring to see that even after twenty years our developers continue to innovate, and bring new technologies to the industry we have served for so long. This past year has seen the release of one of our most extensive product updates ever, and the plans we have for the year coming are even more ambitious. AVAware will continue to build upon the technological foundation we’ve established with AVAproject Fusion, and continue to streamline the integration of our products with the industry’s leading accounting/ERP solutions. The platform is built on the notion that every customer should be able to choose the accounting solution that best suits their operation, and always have unfettered access to their valuable business data. This past year saw the introduction of features that allowed “live” accounting data to be accessed from within AVAproject with a single keystroke. Upcoming releases will build upon this achievement and provide many powerful new capabilities to our users. As always, and especially on this very special year at AVAware, all of us wish to thank our valued clients, vendors and corporate partners for all their past and ongoing support. From our family to yours, we wish to extend our best wishes for a safe and happy holiday season and a very prosperous new year. All the best! Paul S. Kirsch President & CEO AVAware Technologies

AVAware Technologies proudly celebrates 20 years of innovation and service to our valued clients.

December 2016 brought with it a landmark moment in AVAware’s history. Twenty years ago, on the 12th of December 1996, AVAware was born… well, incorporated anyway. AVAware was originally founded by the current President, Paul Kirsch and a gentleman by the name of Steve Rendulic. Rendulic was a veteran of the architectural openings industry, having spent many years working with a competing software developer. Motivated by a desire to develop more technologically “current” software for the industry, he enlisted the aid of his co-founder, a software engineer with extensive experience in developing line-of-business applications for several industry segments. Together they began AVAware with a vision to sincerely establish new standards of quality for both software development and customer support.

AVAware President Paul Kirsch, accompanied by members of the AVAware Support and Catalog Development teams.

AVAware made their debut in the architectural openings industry with the introduction of a revolutionary new product… AVAcad. AVAcad is the first and only CAD application specifically designed for architectural openings. In addition to providing detailers the means to create CAD-quality elevations in seconds, AVAcad launched a new era of technology in the industry with its ability to “disassemble” elevations and generate fully priced material lists – all automatically. Not long after the release of AVAcad, AVAware released ‘AVAproject’ – an innovative piece of software that would forever change the way take-offs and estimates would be done for years to come.

Designed after a “synoptic” journal model, AVAproject was the first estimating package to center project around horizontal ‘Openings Schedules’; a model that would be imitated by competing systems for years to come. Today, seventeen years after its initial release, AVAproject remains the only detailing and estimating package to integrate “live” CAD elevations in its schedules. Additional technologies, that are still exclusive to AVAproject, include such innovations as automatically rendered door and frame elevations, frame profiles created from parametric data, and the ability to automatically price and prep. any frame or door using specially designed companion catalogs.

Despite the passing of Steve Rendulic in 2005 AVAware has maintained that vision that began in those early days, with annual software releases that are unrivaled throughout the industry. Perhaps even more importantly, is the emphasis that has always been placed on customer service. AVAware has made considerable investments in establishing and maintaining a “state-of-art” support infrastructure with a dedicated team of professionals that ensure users of their software products never have to wait for assistance when they need it.

With each year that goes by, AVAware developers continued to innovate and create unique and powerful software solutions for the architectural openings industry. Most recently, AVAware released ‘AVAproject Fusion’ – the first and only package to offer the ability to integrate virtually any ERP/accounting application with the estimating and detailing “front-end” software. Once again, providing the industry with choices never before offered.

For twenty years, AVAware Technologies has worked tirelessly to create and maintain the most innovative products ever offered to the architectural openings industry – and support them with an unmatched level of customer service. Everyone at AVAware extends their most sincere gratitude to the industry for their support for the past two decades, and looks forward to countless exciting achievements in the years to come.

AVAware's first offices 1996 - 2009

AVAware's current facility 2010 - present

The most eagerly anticipated update to the AVAproject Suite of products is now in general release and available for download.

In 2016, the AVAware team made a departure from the usual cycle of product development and release with version 16.1. In a typical year, AVAware would post an early spring release, followed by at least one other major product update in the fall. This year, the team merged the development schedules for the year and worked through the spring and summer on the largest and most feature-rich product update ever released.

The extended development cycle offered the developers the time they needed to bring a number of exciting new features to the product. Many of these enhancements, especially those involving our AVAproject Fusion integration platform, involved many hours of work in cooperation with some of our most experienced users to make our vision for the product a reality. AVAware attributes much of the stability that our users have come to expect and rely upon, on the extensive “beta” testing we conduct on each and every product release. With the size and complexity of version 16.1, the “beta” process was more important than ever. As such, AVAware conducted our longest and most widely participated “beta” program ever. We would like to offer our deepest and most sincere thanks to all the “beta” users that assisted us this year – as always your suggestions and feedback are the wellspring of inspiration that allow us to create the most sophisticated products ever developed for the architectural openings industry.

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Mark the dates on your calendars! The architectural openings industry's preeminent annual event - DHI's conNextions is coming to Phoenix, Arizona on May 10-12, 2017.

As this year comes to a close, it’s time once again to make preparations for the next. For many industry “insiders”, that means making travel arrangements for the architectural openings industry’s preeminent event - The Door and Hardware Institute (DHI) hosted annual ConNextions.

Once – and only once, each year, everyone who is anyone in architecture converge in a single U.S. city for this all-important gathering. For most, it represents the sole opportunity to meet with colleagues and experience many of the industry’s newest product offerings first hand.

In 2017, the event will be held at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona from May 10 through 12. As always, the show features a number of seminars, education sessions and a show floor consisting of industry vendors and service providers.

Once again, AVAware is proud to be participating in the trade show and will have a booth on the show floor. For AVAware, ConNextions is the one event that affords us the opportunity to meet many of our valued clients in person, and we always look forward to it. Those attending this exciting event are invited to visit us as booth number 436.

For more information about ‘DHI ConNextions’, visit the website at: http://www.dhiconnextions.org, or to learn more about the DHI, visit them at: http://dhi.org

Those who contend that the days of innovation for desktop PCs are in the past, obviously haven’t seen Microsoft’s new “Surface Studio”.

Microsoft’s newest PC release, the “Surface Studio”, may well be the greatest hardware innovation ever created for the architectural industry.

For many years now, and especially in the wake of the astonishing growth in mobile technology, many have felt that the PCs best days are long gone. Some have even gone so far has calling this a “post PC era”; one in which users’ needs are being met with the pocket-sized super-computers we call “mobile phones”. It may be true that for many consumers, whose entire computing experience consists of internet browsing, social networks and photo sharing, that the need for full-sized desktop PCs may be a thing of past. The fact remains that tens of millions of people, including students and professionals, rely on PCs for the more demanding tasks that a mobile device simply can’t accommodate.

Microsoft has managed to “hedge their bets” by unifying their desktop and mobile offerings into a single operating system – Windows 10. In response to the popularity of mobile devices, like the tablets offered by Apple and various Android-based products, Microsoft released their “Surface” products. Until recently, the product line consisted of a tablet and “convertible” notebook with a screen that can be removed and used as a tablet. The huge advantage Microsoft’s solution offer is in their operating system. Unlike Apple and Android devices that are limited to extremely scaled-down mobile versions of popular applications (ie: Office, Photoshop, etc.), Windows 10 based tablets run the full application – just as it appears on a desktop PC. This is a massive difference given that mobile versions of these applications usually contain a small fraction of the features offered by their desktop counterparts.

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We welcome any questions, comments or suggestions about any topic mentioned in this edition of AVAwire. Please visit our website for more information, or contact us directly at (416) 239-9099.