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

Cloud: Hype or a Business Reality?

As we come to the close of 2010 I think it's interesting to look and see what state this thing called Cloud is in.

Firstly I think it's fair to say that the visibility of Cloud (which seems a bit of a strange thing to say, given it's nebulous nature, but you know what I mean) is higher today than it's ever been.  Who'd have thought that we'd have adverts on mainstream TV at peak viewing times saying 'To the Cloud..', although how plausible those adverts are is another matter entirely, but if nothing else Microsoft has raised the profile of 'the Cloud'.

Similarly the rise of things such as on-demand streaming from Netflix, the exponential growth of Facebook and other cloud based services has driven the concept of utilizing services where I have no idea of the underlying infrastructure, and quite frankly as a consumer why should I care, to new high's.

That's all well and good for consumer type stuff you say, but what about real Business applications, both with a lower and upper case A!  Earlier in the year I attended the CloudExpo conference in Santa Clara.  This was my second year attending the conference and it was amazing to see the growth in scale from one year to the next.  The number of attendee's (6,000), the number of sessions, the number of exhibitors were all way higher than the previous year, and listening to the organizers they're planning for over 10,000 attendee's at their next event in New York in the spring of 2011.  So certainly the interest from the business community is there.

But interest is one thing, what about actual usage?  The latest research from Saugatuck, http://goo.gl/pmXQD, states "by the end of 2014, an average of 50 percent of new software deployments worldwide will be made in the Cloud, marking a tipping point in business solution acquisition, implementation and deployment that will change the fundamental nature and roles of IT, as well as ISVs."  50%, that's a huge number, and so is the comment about fundamental change!

Ok, but what about the concerns of moving to the cloud, especially the #1 concern, security?  At the CloudExpo conference I had a chance to talk to Steve Riley, an evangelist at Amazon who specializes in security.  He has an interesting perspective about Cloud security, which to cut a long story short, boils down to the fact that the Cloud is in many ways more secure that your tradtional server room.  Just think how many of your employee's or collegues can simply walk up to your servers today and potentially switch them off?  Amazon won't even tell you where their data centers are located, let alone what machine your instance happens to be running on!  It was also interesting to see that for a brief period, before government pressure, WikiLeaks moved onto Amazon to avoid DDoS attacks as Amazon is architected to handle any such attack.

The public cloud vendors such as Amazon have made huge strides in the past few months in the area of security.  Recent press releases from Amazon tell of their ISO 27001 accreditation and SaaS70-Type II audits.  But one of the big concerns, especially from many of our partners has been PCI.  Any application that stores credit card info always raised a red card when it came to Cloud.  Well, just in this past week Amazon annouced that they've achieve PCI DSS Level 1 accreditation. http://goo.gl/4JwDH  That large thud you hear, is just annother barrier to Cloud adoption falling.

I think it's safe to say that in 2011 this phenomenon that is Cloud will continue to grow, in all aspects, the sheer number of vendors, it's adoption and relevance to the CxO level and below in businesses ranging from large corporations to start-ups (what other technology allows a start up to compete with the big guys when it comes to infrastructure).  And OpenEdge will be there every step of the way, as we move forwards with Progress Arcade, OpenEdge 11 & OpenEdge BPM, you can bet we're working flat out to make sure that you are best positioned to take advantage of what can only be seen as a game changer.  

Welcome to the new business reality!

 

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.

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.

Transforming your Application in a SaaS-y kind of way…..

The SaaS approach to deploying software solutions is emerging and evolving. As customers continue to expand their acceptance of SaaS, as existing software vendors seek to take advantage of this model and as more new SaaS vendors emerge, it is helpful to develop an architectural model that encompasses all of the issues a SaaS offering may need to address.

Faster implementations, automatic upgrades, increased software flexibility, and higher customer responsiveness all are needed to increase your software's value. These change the application software cost/benefit equation and enhances the customer ownership experience for the better.
 
SaaS providers have to design and operate their software using a new approach that results in a higher value, but with a far lower cost structure. While on the surface SaaS offerings will look the same as hosted legacy software, it is not always the same “under the covers”.
 
SaaS offerings have several characteristics that lower costs and increase value significantly for customers, both up-front and over time. Many costs that legacy software providers incur are completely eliminated by a SaaS vendor's product design and business model, so the SaaS vendor can deploy its resources in ways that provide far higher value to customers.
 
SaaS solutions are architected to be extremely configurable to avoid customizations. The terms customization and personalization are sometimes used distinctively and sometimes interchangeably. Personalization is often used to describe presenting content to individual users based on knowledge of who they are and customization is thought of as defining certain preferences that affect how an application behaves. Providing functionality in a SaaS application to allow customers and their users to configure the solution according to their specific needs (as opposed to code changes) is critical to achieving the goal of providing a single application shared by everyone. This requires careful thought, advance planning and design in the overall application.

The key to success is to provide as much configurability in your application as possible.  Thus code customization and implementation delays that customers typically incur in an on-premise solution are completely eliminated, both during initial implementation and with each upgrade, removing another significant cost of ownership for customers.

Delivery of the SaaS application via the web lowers the deployment costs associated with the application, and expands the reach to more end-users.  The key to remember is to keep it as simple as possible for users to find what they need and understand what to do next. The old standard concepts of top navigation to get to the main areas of an application and sub navigation to get to the different functions within a main area has become so well known that virtually anyone with any experience clicking around the web will feel comfortable following this general paradigm.

Most existing ISVs do not transform their applications overnight, but instead do so as their SaaS business evolves.  Many have developed a “playbook” to guide the evolution of their offerings. The playbook does not start or end with the technology, but rather focuses on the new business opportunities that can be built around SaaS-based technology.

Progress Software recently developed a series of Whitepapers that outline the Architectural components to be considered when developing a SaaS application.  Go to PSDN Online to access the SaaS Expertise Center to view these SaaS Architectural overview papers. http://www.psdn.com/library/kbcategory.jspa?categoryID=2129  And as always – any questions or comments – let me know at cosmith@progress.com.

Is that quicksand in your cubicle...or are you just stuck?

"Dang, now we are in trouble..." - Taggart, Blazing Saddles (1974)

In that opening segment of Blazing Saddles, poor Bart and Charlie find themselves stuck in quicksand.

But what does a 34-year old satirical Western comedy film have to do with you and your application?

Well, you might use Taggart's line when you realize you can't give your business users what they need. Or you can imagine yourself in your cubicle, stuck in quicksand, unsure how to get started (if your imagination is not working for you, see it for real here).

But you don't have to be stuck, the Application Modernization process has three possible phases - Upgrade, Migrate and Transform.

• Upgrade - Loading OpenEdge 10 and deploying it without making any code changes
• Migrate - Adding in new capabilities without making major architectural changes
• Transform - Using new capabilities and new approaches to change the architecture

The difference between each phase is the amount of effort you put into it. The more effort you put into your application, the greater value you will get out of it.

To start climbing out of your quicksand pit, follow these steps:

1. Define your top business priorities - what does the business need to do (or not do) to be successful - next month and in the next year(s)
2. Research new capabilities - what is new in OpenEdge that can help you? (Hint: Search on Upgrade, Migrate and Transform on PSDN Online)
3. Review the common Application Modernization strategies - to determine what solutions are best for you. (If you don't know what they are, then you must have missed our Modernization webinar - but you can see the replay here.) 
4. Determine what the right level of effort is for you - just the right amount to maximize the value to your users
5. Define an incremental plan that works for you - so you can determine the pace and priority

With this proven approach, you can get your foot on the rail and start climbing out of the quicksand.

And if anyone knows how to get quicksand out of a keyboard, please let us all know...