View from the Edge

All I want for Christmas is "getting my application to do"...

When I speak with customers, I often hear "if we could only get our application to do"... (well, just fill in the blank for yourself and you get the idea).

The more we talk about their problem, we seem to find out that they really are just unsure of how to get started - of how to start taking the small steps to evolve their application and make it easier for them to "get their application to do" just about anything that they need to for their users.

Application Modernization is the process for systematically evolving your application so you can:

• Preserve the OpenEdge-based business logic you have already created
• Reduce the time and effort you need to spend maintaining your application and
• Open your application to more capabilities and features

I'll be presenting a webinar next week entitled Application Modernization: Your Foundation for Agile Growth.

If you are unsure how to get started "getting your application to do"... well, just about anything... please come and join us. Full details (and some other great materials) can be found at www.progress.com/modernize.

And don't forget to bring your questions - we'll have a live Q&A session during the webinar.

Agree to Disagree

I recently read Daryl Plummer’s (Gartner Group) blog and I have to agree, but also disagree with what he said.  I agree that it is not an easy thing to transition from being a traditional ISV to becoming a SaaS provider – he is absolutely right about that - however his comment about "the vast majority of ISVs will have a very difficult time with this switch" - is what I have to challenge.  I think this is a very general statement and one that I have a tough time fully buying.

I have worked with over 200 ISVs in their transition to SaaS and to date over 90% of them have been successful - but the key is that they developed a business plan, marketing plan and technical plan on how to go about making the transition and then worked with us as their Infrastructure partner, along with a managed services delivery partner and together sold to a new target market, software services very successfully.

As he says in his blog - it is not an easy task, but if they view this as a change in their business model and partner with the right ecosystem - then they can be very successful.  I think the other key thing that he forgot to mention is knowledge of your customer's industry.  Most of the ISVs that we work with are "niche" software vendors with products that are critical to their customer's business (ex: travel, legal, healthcare, agricultural, trucking/logistics, etc....) and the biggest differentiator that they have is knowledge of the industry, and so when they build a business model of offering their software as a service with subscription pricing and a full services capability – they bring to this model – knowledge of the industry and that is KEY. 

If they do this, then ISVs will be able to expand their market opportunity to the "S" in the SMB market and their growth potential can be exponential.  The growth comes as they find a new market to offer their service, while leveraging their existing business process/software knowledge/application - but offering it to this new market in a new way.  This is, in my opinion what needs to happen by many of the ISVs out there that have a software application that is being sold via the traditional model, today.  If they understand how to develop a new business model and define the new target market - they will be ahead of a startup - because they will already have the IP they need to offer a fully functional service to their customers.

So the net/net is that ISVs can be successful – it just is that they need to think of SaaS/Cloud Computing, as a new business opportunity and develop the business model before just jumping in headfirst.  But SUCCESS is achievable and we have plenty of ISVs that have shown that to be true.

OpenEdge 10.2A coming soon

OpenEdge 10.2A is scheduled to be available soon.  OpenEdge is the only platform that is optimized for the building of Service-Oriented Business Applications.  It differentiates from other offerings in the market because:

• Its purpose to simplify building your data- and transaction- and service-centric business applications with the highest productivity
• Integration and interoperability features are built-in, thus making it easy for you to connect to any application regardless of the technology or platform its built-on
• Support of a broad and rich set of open interfaces and integrated UI capabilities to ensure your applications can be built with any UI technology you choose, and even support multiple UIs with a single set of business logic
• High performance and scalable embedded database that ensures that all your data management needs can be met

OpenEdge 10.2A focus on the commercialization of the OpenEdge GUI for .NET which provides developers with the ability to build competitive, state of the art, contemporary user interfaces for their applications using Microsoft .NET Winforms technology.   What makes OpenEdge 10.2A offering better is that developers can do so in a highly productive manner because the new functionality is built into OpenEdge, integrating in OpenEdge Architect the new development tools such as the brand new Visual Designer and the extended Class Browser, empowering you to use only ABL, the best business-purposed programming language, and being fully compatible and interoperable with your existing OpenEdge GUI, to adopt at your own pace.

No one else provides such ease of use, productivity and business functionality, all within a single purpose development environment.

But 10.2A is anticipated to have much more than the GUI for .NET!  From a host of customer-driven usability and performance enhancements in OpenEdge Architect, as well as new XML and WSDL editors, to more OO extensions including garbage collection, through a new TIMEZONE session attribute to ease the deployment and reduce the operation costs of global applications, or sparse ProDataSet XML serialization for lower resources and increased performance, or OpenEdge server products support for Windows 2008 64-bit, to mention just a few.

The very high number of members and level of participation in the 10.2A Beta program, one of our largest and exciting beta programs ever, should be a good indication of the enthusiasm and anticipation that the Progress community is showing for OpenEdge 10.2A.  So, stay tuned for more information coming soon, and hang on, just a few more weeks to go!

Salvador

* For informational purposes only. Information in this posting may not be interpreted as any commitment on behalf of Progress, and future development, timing and release of any features or functionality described remains at our sole discretion.