View from the Edge

Greetings 2012 – Say Hello to OpenEdge 11

As was mentioned in mid-December, the latest update to our OpenEdge platform is now shipping, and I am pleased to say that it is enabling hundreds of our customers and ISV partners to securely develop and deploy applications across any platform, any mobile device, and any Cloud.

One of the highlights of OpenEdge 11.0 is our patent-pending Multi-tenant Tables, in which data is physically (not virtually) separated in the database - providing greater security and control for Cloud deployments. Multi-tenancy is a critical component and key differentiator for our customers and partners, along with our multi-Cloud deployment options, business process-enabled development, and support for mobile devices.

Feedback has been very positive and many customers are migrating to OpenEdge 11.0 sooner than expected to take advantage of the increased security in the Cloud, greater deployment flexibility, reduced costs, and faster time to market. Let me share some of that feedback with you now.

Security and Flexibility through Multi-Tenancy

Jeffrey Brown, Senior Development Project Manager at Infor notes, “Progress provides us with the technology to power our Infor10 Distribution Business, a distribution application specifically designed to help distributors with complex business models run an efficient, end-to-end operation. We are interested in the new multi-tenancy capabilities in the OpenEdge platform that could provide us with the flexibility to add an additional level of security and separation of data at the database level that is unique in the industry.”

Reducing Cost While Speeding Time to Deployment

Another Progress partner, a global medical software and services provider, used OpenEdge to develop an order management system for internal call centers. Multi-tenant Tables in OpenEdge 11 provide a viable solution for compliance with data security regulations customary to the healthcare industry. Moreover, it facilitates the roll-out of their order management system to all companies they acquire moving forward, which will be deployed in a fraction of the time, for a fraction of the cost, and with better security measures.

Efficiency and Moving Down Market with SaaS

Over in Germany, EDV-Software-Service AG (ESS), a provider of ERP software and services for the mid-size housing and real estate market, is leveraging OpenEdge 11 Multi-tenant tables to move to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) to gain efficiency and expand into new markets. Their CIO Michael Förster explained, “Progress Software understands the needs of medium-sized businesses and helps us provide value to our customers and accelerate our time-time-market with new solutions. We took part in the OpenEdge Early Adopter Program and Multi-tenancy Workshop, and in only five days were given the tools and expertise needed to get our new release ready for launch in early 2012.”

I look forward to hearing more about how our customers and partners are taking advantage of OpenEdge 11.0. For more information on OpenEdge 11.0, please review the “What’s New in OpenEdge 11.0” feature highlight.

Here’s to a great start to 2012!

Thanks and as always, please feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you think.

5 Signs You Need a Business Process-Enabled Application

As I have mentioned many times before in various forums, next generation business applications need to be able to quickly adapt to business changes. The old, traditional way of hard-coding workflows is just not acceptable anymore. There is a need to drive continuous change and process improvement even within pre-existing business applications.

But how can you tell whether or not your application is in need of an update? Here are five signs that you need a business process-enabled application:

1. You have more menu items then puzzle pieces.
   While using an application, users want to seamlessly get through their work with as few detours as possible. Unfortunately some applications make customers feel like they are putting together a puzzle – lots of pieces and no guidance as to where to begin. A business process-enabled application can guide users through the application with a customizable wizard-like interface, creating a much friendlier and better user experience.
2. Your workflows are set in stone.
   Hard-coding workflows into your application may have worked in the past, but today’s dynamic applications shouldn’t force users to follow a path that might not be correct and/or efficient. Today’s customers demand more flexibility and continuous process improvement, and business process-enabled applications allow you to tailor processes as needed.
3. Your customers are NOT all created equal.
   Ford used to say you can have your Model T in any color you like, as long as it’s black. Unfortunately, the same goes for many applications these days. A company will tell its customers or users that they can use the application to get the job done as long as they do X then Y then Z. That specific process might not make sense for each customer or user. They want to be able customize the workflow to work best for them, and by providing business process-enabled apps, you can provide the right solution for each specific need all with a single application.
4. Your IT team makes your business decisions.
   Business decisions should address customer and market demands, not what works best for the IT department. Yet many applications are updated based on what the IT department thinks is best. By adding business process management (BPM) capabilities to your existing application, you can drive better decisions that are acceptable to the business folks, all while adjusting quickly and easily to market changes.
5. Your application picture is worth a thousand lines of code.
   Many companies will collaborate with their customers or users to determine what processes and workflows should be included in an application and then capture them in some form (e.g. paper, whiteboard, graphical diagramming tool like Microsoft® Visio®). Next, they hand over the results to the developers and tell them to “build the application.” Ultimately, this means the work is done twice as the developers try to figure out how to code what they see. Business process-enabled applications let you quickly capture the process or workflow graphically and simply “plug it in” to the business logic of the application and you are off and running. Think Visio on steroids. That graphical “picture” is now worth much more than the 1000s of “words” or lines of code. It means you only do the work once and also gain better visibility into how the application functions without requiring a master’s degree in computer science. Plus, the business folks can stay engaged.

In summary, if any of these points resonate with you, maybe it's time to think about business process-enabling YOUR business application.

Thanks and, as always, please feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you think.

Announcing AutoEdge|TheFactory, a new OpenEdge Sample Application

To coincide with the release of OpenEdge 10.2b04 and Savvion 7.6.1 we are pleased to announce a new sample application, AutoEdge|TheFactory which can be found on Progress Communities : http://communities.progress.com/pcom/community/psdn/openedge/architecture/autoedgethefactory

AutoEdge|TheFactory is an extension of the use cases illustrated by the original AutoEdge sample application.  Where AutoEdge is based upon the business functions of an automobile dealer, AutoEdge|TheFactory is based upon the business functions of an automobile manufacturer supplying vehicles to dealers.

The aim of AutoEdge|TheFactory is to introduce the concepts of an OpenEdge Reference Architecture based Business Process Application utilizing OpenEdge BPM.

Recorded guides

To see more about AutoEdge|TheFactory  there are a set of videos that guide you through the installation as well as the design and running of the  application:

• The installation guide is here ; it contains a walk-through of the installation process (approx. 15min)
• A recording describing the design process in SBM Studio is here (approx. 30min)
• A recording running through the process appears here (approx. 12min)

The Source Code

In order to run the complete sample application you will need both OpenEdge 10.2b04 and Savvion 7.6.1 installed.  AutoEdge|TheFactory is developed utilizing the Object Oriented extensions to the ABL in OpenEdge 10.2B so you can install without Savvion in order to get a closer look at the code.

Selected code highlights

• Inversion of Control Container: InjectABL
• Query manipulation and query row keys
• Data request and response
• Enumerations in OOABL
• Structured Error Handling
• Strongly-typed Events
• Object Serialization

 

There is also a wealth of documentation related to the project available that highlights & describes many of the coding techniques & decisions made on the project so far.

 

This is the first of a planned number of releases of AutoEdge|TheFactory over the coming months, you can expect to see more functionality and documentation being added as we work our way through the project.

 

Please feel free to give us feedback, good and bad through the discussion forums attached to the project.

 

Special thanks go to all those people who worked on the project, with particular mention to Peter Judge for his tireless efforts in making this a reality, along with support from a cast of many including Havard Danielsen, Sarah Marshall, Dr. Kamyar and Ken Wilner for his constant feedback, plus those who helped test in the final days before going public.

 

Many Thanks

Mike

Top 5 Signs Your Business Applications Are In Need of a Facelift

How can you tell if your application needs a facelift?   Here are some telltale signs:

 1.  You turn on your computers and the screen shows a 1980’s “Green Screen” interface from MS DOS.

Today’s workforce is full of young digital natives, but many of today’s business applications seem stuck in the middle ages. This younger workforce needs to have an intuitive user interface (UI), similar to what they are used to using on a daily basis in Gmail, iTunes, and smart phones. Reading email on a green screen interface is just not appealing.

And this UI issue goes beyond just being intuitive – some companies are finding it hard to recruit younger workers due to their older, prehistoric looking applications.

It is important that we modernize our applications to look like the things we use on an every day basis at home, and move away from the dark (green) ages.

2.     You have to go to nine different screens to enter one invoice.

Today’s application users seek simplicity and ease of use, and hope to avoid complicated entry methods at all costs. Having an application that requires multiple pages of entry is not only complicated, but time consuming as well.

For instance, imagine if in order to send a text message from your iPhone, and it was a character DOS based prompt or even worse if you had to use a rotary dialer. Today, phones are able to store countless phone numbers, and you can even dial by voice – making the phone much simpler and easy to use.

Whether it’s five minutes or five pages, if your applications are complicated and not easy to use, then it’s time to consider modernizing your apps.

3.     You have to run from desktop to desktop to download an application onto each computer.

 Today’s workforce is no longer in one place – employees are traveling, working remotely, and need to be able to access important information on their phone. Yet many companies still rely on a sneaker network, where IT professionals must run from desktop to desktop, adding applications to each computer.

For instance, it wouldn’t make much sense if Google had to visit everyone with a computer that used their search engine to load updates. That is why web-based applications are so great, they are easy to update, and very portable – accessible from your cell phone, iPad, laptop, or desktop.

If you have a fat client server, and applications that reside on every desktop then you need an application facelift. 

4.     Your application can’t integrate with other applications.

Today we live in an integrated world – where applications are constantly communicating with each other to make our lives easier. However, many companies still rely on stand-alone apps – where the information you enter into one app stays only in that app.

It would be like if you went to department store, and in order to use your credit card the cashier had to enter your credit card information manually, call the credit card company to authorize the charge, then enter a authorization code to finish the transaction. Today it’s just swipe and your done – all of the applications are integrated and communicate behind the scenes. A lot of places will even remember your information and what you bought last.

It is clear that applications can’t stand-alone any more. If your applications aren’t integrated, then your apps are in need of a facelift.

5.     Your customers are all running completely different version of your applications

Today’s application provider should be able to support a single, multi-tenant application, allowing for multiple customers who can each personalize the application. This won’t work if all of your customers have different versions of your application, and you spend all your time managing and maintaining each version.

Back in the day, you weren’t a software provider; you were a custom consulting organization. It would have take two to five weeks of a consulting engagement just to make a change to the application.

If you are looking to deliver better services to customers, your apps needed to be workflow enabled. If you can’t run your business with a single code, then you should look into modernizing your app and taking advantage of newer technologies such as business process enablement.

What is Application Modernization all about and why should you care?

For successful businesses, the saying “don’t fix what ain’t broke,” has long been the standby guideline. That said, while your applications may technically be running properly, they very well might be quite broken.  It just depends on your definition of broken.

Today’s developers and technology strategists look upon an application with additional scrutiny. A “broken” application can be one that carries any inherent risk to many companies in ways that you may not have considered, such as: 

• Lack of employee productivity
• Less than stellar business process efficiency
• Customer dissatisfaction due to speed of service delivery
• Negatively affecting employee/customer retention and/or acquisition

For example, one of our customer’s that I was meeting with mentioned that its point-of-sale (POS) system, while running quite well and doing everything the company needed it to do, however unknown to them -it was in fact an inhibitor to the recruitment efforts for new sales associates in the stores. 

In this case, it came down to the user interface. The company’s application was functional, but it seemed terribly out of date to nearly anyone looking at it for the first time. The company learned that potential employees, who were 17-24 years of age, not only feared a steep learning curve, but actually perceived the POS system to be difficult to use, as they were used to a more “IPod” look & feel.

This is because the 21st century workforce is largely made up of digital natives, people who have grown up with an electronic lifestyle.  They are quite used to the human-machine interaction – but they absolutely need to feel at home in the user-interface of the applications that they use.

There are many easy ways to update applications, without requiring a complete redesign or even rip & replace of the back-end.  Some, like in the example above, center on the user interface.  Other application modernization efforts may focus on adding devices that are more suited for data entry in the worker’s environment, for example, enabling the use of ruggedized scanners at loading docks, or inclusion of data arising from digital scales.

Updating your applications may also save money in the long run. Out of date, sprawling applications tend to be more expensive to support.  As an old application continues to age, fewer folks within the IT organization may actually understand how the application was built or how to support it.  Inefficient applications may also lead to extraneous resource use (i.e., Internet bandwidth, database size) or require more constant support on the back-end.  Further, quite often, developers must spend time managing various versions of the application, instead of being able to update just one set of code.

The bottom line is that business workflows are continuing to change to become more dynamic and efficient, so applications need to be changed as well to best support those new processes.  That is what we see as a sure sign for the need to undertake an Application Modernization effort.

Check out the latest Forrester Consulting study

We wanted to find out more about the economic impact that Progress Partners may realize by building applications with OpenEdge versus using a non-Progress platform. To help us, we enlisted Forrester Consulting to do some research. You can see what they discovered in this new report:  The Total Economic Impact™ of Progress Software OpenEdge Platform. Among the revealing findings:

• Developing with OpenEdge was shown to be 40% more  productive than alternative platforms
• ISVs choosing OpenEdge are able to deliver their  application 30% faster to market than when using an alternative platform
• Once deployed the support staff productivity gain is 80%  as compared to alternative platforms

Get the full report to learn more.

Webinar Reminder

Hi

Just a quick reminder about the SaaS & Cloud Webinar that's happening tomorrow, Oct 28th.  See Nancy's post below for more details.

Mike

Australia The Tour, Part 3: Melbourne

So Melbourne was the 3rd and final stop for this years Australia Exchange.  It's certainly been a different experience from the usual 3 day get together, and from what I can tell it seems to have been a big hit with those who attended.  Many of whom were able to attend for the first time due to the show coming to them, as opposed to the other way round!

Once we'd recovered from the weather shock we had a little downtime before the show started on the Friday.  I must admit from a personal point of view, having the travel day in between each of the session days has been huge bonus, otherwise the schedule would have been a killer.  So it was good to hit the gym, and for those that know me and have just fallen off their chairs, yes I went to the gym and ran!! Not very quick, admittedly, but hey something's better than nothing, right?

Not wishing to sound like a broken record, but just like the other cities, Melbourne was a complete sell-out which was great to see.  There's nothing worse than presenting to yourself!!  Once again the main themes presented certainly seemed to hit the right notes, with Multi-Tenancy and RIA peaking the most interest.  I must admit I've been pleasantly surprised by the reaction to the Multi-tenancy proposal, even by those who don't yet see SaaS as a big play for them today.

I was also reminded on this trip that I sometimes get so focused and involved into something that I often forget that not everyone is as obsessed as I am.  During this trip one of the topics that I mentioned time & time again during each day was Amazon EC2.  Currently living in the US I guess I take it for granted that in the IT world at least, people know that Amazon have a cloud strategy, even if they don't know the specific terms, so it was sobering to be asked at one of the after conference cocktail party's  if I was talking about the same Amazon that simply sold books!  It just shows it's good to get out of that ivory tower as much as possible!!!

The one common story from all the cities, and one that shows we still have a better job to do was around Progress Communities.  I was surprised how any people either hadn't really heard of it or didn't realize what it is.  Don't get me wrong there were many people who'd used it and got value from it, but it seemed there were more that hadn't.  That surprises me because if you're an OpenEdge user, Progress Communities is the key place for you to discover a huge amount of information relating to the product and best practices.  It's our main vehicle to deliver valuable content to you as users, and a mechanism by which you can post questions and comments around anything OpenEdge related.  In fact there are people within Progress, such as myself, who as part of their job are expected to participate in the activity that's going on, so if you do have a question or comment, the chances are the person who responds is more than likely the person responsible for that area of the product or maybe even implemented it!  I really do encourage you all to take a look, but don't just to look, participate.  

I'd like to take this opportunity to firstly thank all those who attended the sessions over the 3 days.  I realize it's not always easy to leave the office, especially in these current economic times, but without you the sessions would have been nothing.  I'd also like to thank the whole Progress Australia team for their hospitality during our visit.  There are too many names to call out individually but as always they made a long trip so much fun in addition to all the hard work.

Oh, and the highlight of the trip back, meeting will.i.am from the Black Eyed Peas in the 'Chilli's To Go' at LAX.  Shelley even got his autograph.  See how we just mingle with the stars here at Progress!!!

'I've got a feeling' its time to go :)

Thanks for reading

Mike 

Webinar on Cloud Computing and SaaS

Register to learn more about Cloud Computing and Software as a Service (SaaS) and how you can plan and deploy and modernized OpenEdge applications that takes advantage of these new technologies.   We are making it easy to take the first step with a webinar on Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 11:00 am EST.  Join Colleen Smith, Director of OpenEdge Product Marketing and SaaS along with Mike Ormerod, Architect, SaaS & Cloud Computing Strategy for this technology focused session.

In case you missed the UK PUG meeting......

On October 1st, if you are a user of Progress technology and reside in the London, England area the Progress User Group (PUG) meeting was the place to be.

Forty PUG members and twenty perspective members attended the meeting to learn and hear from customers and Progress Executives.  Ken Wilner, VP of Technology shared the OpenEdge roadmap which prompted a lively discussion regarding market insights and future requirements.  There was a customer presentation and sessions on the Cloud, Application Modernization and SaaS.

In case you missed it the UK PUG was the winner of the Exchange Online 2009 PUG contest.  As the PUG with the most Exchange registered attendees, at 44, refreshments were on Progress.  No PUG meeting would be complete without prizes and networking opportunities.   

New PUG meetings are always being added to Progress Communities. Don't miss the next PUG meeting in your area…there's always something new and interesting to learn!