View from the Edge

Straight From the Source: How One of Our ISV Partners Uses SaaS to Improve Business

Almost all businesses—large or small—have a need for a comprehensive human resources (HR) program to serve their most valued resources, employees. Leading integrated benefits, payroll and human resources solutions provider Unicorn HRO provides solutions to manage HR processes with greater speed, scope and depth.

In the ’80s, Unicorn’s on-premise solution addressed approximately half the target market needs, and they knew they wanted to offer more.  Today, Unicorn leverages the Progress OpenEdge SaaS application development platform to help their customers, from mega-corporations like McDonalds to lesser-known SMBs (small-medium businesses), do business with greater efficiency.

I asked Tim Diassi, EVP and GM for Unicorn HRO to share the top reasons they use SaaS and this is what he told me:

• Ability to deliver services via the Web -- Unicorn releases new software upgrades twice a year with updated federal, state and local tax rates. SaaS helps Unicorn keep everything up-to-date so that customers can quickly and easily take advantage of the newest software version to stay compliant.
• Reduced time-to-market – The scalability and flexibility of a SaaS application development platform accelerates the speed with which Unicorn distributes software upgrades. In fact, Unicorn migrated 50 clients over a single weekend, without a hitch.
• Business continuity and disaster processing – Just because your network goes down, doesn’t mean your business can stop running. Unicorn’s service teams have kept customers’ applications up and running during all kinds of crises, including Hurricane Katrina.
• Increased ROI – Thanks to the cloud, Unicorn has experienced double-digit growth for the past 5 years without adding any significant cost of capital investment for the development of new services.

The Progress–Unicorn partnership shows the true power of SaaS. We’re excited to continue to work with such an innovative company as they plan further leverage SaaS for increased efficiency and business process integration.

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

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.

Imitation is the Highest Form of Flattery

It’s nice to be first…

First makes you a thought leader. First means you are ahead of the curve. First tells everyone else “follow me…”

On September 20, 2011, Progress announced the general availability of Progress® Arcade™ - a portal environment for simplifying the deployment of SaaS applications in the Cloud. The Arcade platform is Cloud agnostic to prevent vendor lock-in, thanks to a partnership with RightScale. It’s so simple to use, it only takes a handful of mouse clicks to go from zero to the Cloud. You can move your application and data back and forth from the Cloud if you require without restriction. Initially, Amazon is the Cloud vendor for Arcade, with others following soon.

Now, read this:

On October 6, 2011 at Oracle’s OpenWorld Conference, CEO Larry Ellison announced the Oracle Public Cloud, which I happened to learn about from a blog post on TechCrunch. According to Ellison, the Oracle Public Cloud is a platform for the deployment of Oracle applications in the Cloud. It avoids vendor lock-in through Cloud interoperability. It allows the application and data to move back and forth from the Cloud if needed. And, it can “play nice” with Amazon.

Sound familiar? It sure does.

Progress was first to market with Arcade. Oracle was first as well – first to follow!

Again, it’s nice to be first…

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

All About the Cloud...

Last week I spent 3 days at the 'All About The Cloud' conference in San Francisco, an event that is primarily targeted at ISV's, and where for the first time Progress had a booth in the vendor Expo.  Let's just review that, Progress had a booth at a Cloud conference, to many that may come as a bit of a surprise, a welcome one I hope! So what does Progress have to offer with regards to Cloud?  More than you may realize.

If you read my last Blog post you will know about Progress Arcade, our initiative to simplify the task of getting to the Cloud for our customers & partners. In addition to Progress Arcade, there is also the work that the DataDirect folks have been doing around connectivity with the DataDirect XE for JDBC, Salesforce.com driver that enables Java based SQL to connect directly to Salesforce.com using JDBC,  making it easier and faster to query and modify data in Salesforce.com  from custom-developed and commercial Java-based applications.  Last, but certainly not least, there is the Cloud Ecosystem vision that was delivered by Progress CTO John Bates at the recent Analyst Day in New York, which envisions the concept of Vertically specialized ecosystems utilizing Solution Accelerators running in the Cloud, all heady stuff!

 

The general theme of the conference was around the concepts of Cloud, and its perceived value and adoption, with each speaker having some strong numbers to back things up:

• Bill McNee from Saugatuck Research asserted that 'By 2015, 50% of new IT spend will be based upon some element of Cloud'
• Kara Swisher of the Wall Street Journal - 'Every Business will be in the Cloud in the next 10 years, it's just one of those inevitable things'
• Matt Thompson of Microsoft - 'By 2014, Greater than 80% of all new software will be deployed in the Cloud, with 33% of all business applications being consumed via SaaS'

 

It was also interesting to hear from Matt Thompson that the investment being made by Microsoft into Cloud is the single biggest investment in Microsoft's history, period, and by an order of magnitude.

 

In addition to the booth, Progress also had a breakout session where our very own Colleen Smith, along with the CEO of RightScale, and the ISV Manager for Amazon Web Services, discussed the topic of Successfully Partnering in the Cloud, and how through building Progress Arcade we have partnered to have a solution that is a win-win for all parties involved. Maybe that should be a win-win-win...:-) Talking of Arcade there is a great article by Martin Banks 'Progress aims to open Cloud by abstracting it' that discusses the potential of opening up the Cloud to the non-tech-savvy brand masters via Progress Arcade!

One cautionary note in a keynote speech by Treb Ryan, CEO of OpSource, and also a guy who sold a company for $1.4b, yes, that's a b, was the issue of Cloud vendor lock-in, The concern that once an application is deployed with one vendor, how easy is it to move to a different vendor, especially in light of the recent Amazon outage.  Ryan's longer term vision was that of peer Clouds, which just as with peer networks, are transparent to the application and it's users, but the application can be seamlessly moved from one Cloud to another.  It's an interesting concept and will be something to watch, but he also stated that the only viable solution to achieve this today was by utilizing RightScale.  Remember them, the company that we at Progress are partnering with for our win-win-win!

Overall it was a great conference, well attended, we had some good discussions at the booth, and some cool feedback following the presentation by Colleen & co.  But it's also good to see Progress is at the vanguard of what's happening, as Jim Whitehurst, CEO of RedHat said in his keynote, "Cloud is a fundamental paradigm shift, like the move from mainframe to client server', and I couldn't agree more!

 

Thanks for reading

Mike

Progress Arcade, what's that? Can I play?

As Progress Arcade makes it's first tentative steps into the world (we'll shortly start a Beta program) I thought it might be worth while to do a quick posting as to what Arcade is and also importantly what it isn't.  I'm sure some of you reading this will know of Arcade, or at least have a vague understanding or heard of it in passing, but for some this maybe the first you ever heard of it! 

 

So, what is Progress Arcade?

Well, the first thing to say is what it isn't, and that is, it's not a product.  It's a destination!

 

A destination? So I can bring my quarters and start playing Space Invaders?

 

Er, No! It's a destination where Customers & Partners can go to Stage & Test, Demonstrate, Evaluate and Deploy Progress based Products and Applications in the Cloud, as well as  offer Services and join a community in discussion around all things Progress & Cloud.

 

Ah yes, to the Cloud! Any Cloud?

 

Initially our focus is on public clouds, with Amazon being our first, but the architecture and design of Arcade was built deliberately with the purpose of allowing multiple Cloud vendors to be utilized, it's just that we have to start somewhere, and so we decided to start with Amazon as they have the largest mind share today.  But the ability is there to offer other public clouds such as Rackspace, GoGrid, and even private cloud technologies such as Eucalyptus.  It's perfectly feasible that using Arcade you could have an Application Server running on one public cloud vendors infrastructure in one geographic region, and an associated Web Server running on a completely different cloud vendors infrastructure in a different part of the world, allowing the deployment of servers close to the user for maximum performance.

 

Ok, that all sounds great, but it also sounds complicated!

 

Not at all!  My whole mantra for Arcade has been to make the Cloud 'Fisher Price' !!  You shouldn't have to go through a huge learning exercise, reading about AWS, EC2, S3, EBS, and all the other terms the cloud folks come up with (and they are just Amazon terms, you can imagine that the other vendors have their own terms) just to use the cloud.  So what if I were to tell you that once logged in to Arcade, in 10 clicks of a mouse (and that includes accepting some legal T&C's), you can have a multi-server deployment (Web Server and Application Server), with Progress products installed, up and running in Singapore!  That's the power of Progress Arcade.

Right, that all sounds fantastic, but I still don't get it.  What do I use Arcade for?

Well, there are a number of use cases depending on who you are, but lets review a couple. 

 

First lets assume you're a Progress Partner, you've heard about the cloud, read some analyst reports saying it's the best thing since sliced bread, and you have an application that you'd like to deploy in the cloud.  Arcade provides the ability for you as the Partner to go through the necessary steps to check out the cloud, make sure your application operates as expected in a cloud environment before you ultimately deploy.  The first step would be to use the 'Stage & Test' area within Arcade.  Stage & Test allows through a number of mouse clicks, the ability to on-demand request a deployment from a Progress provided list of options (Progress Products and Operating System choices), the cloud region you'd like to test in etc.  After the deployment configuration has been requested, Arcade builds the chosen configuration specifically for you based upon the options chosen.  Once created, the deployment can be started and you can log onto the running servers that have the products requested already installed.  You're now free to use the servers as required, so you can install your application and begin to perform whatever tests you'd like to make sure the application performs as needed.  When testing is complete and you're happy that the application and environment works as expected, there is the option to take a copy of the environment and in effect make that your gold-image.    From this point you now have a couple of choices.  Arcade allows you to 'Publish' the tested environment to either a Demo or Deployment area.  As their names suggest, Demo allows you to control demo copies of the environment for use by Sales people or potential customers, Deploy allows you to have a true production environment running 24x7x365. Again, all without the need of having to go though a huge learning exercise of all the cloud terminology.

 

Now lets assume you're an existing Progress customer, or even a new prospect, and you'd like to evaluate Progress products.  As a user I can log onto Arcade and select the 'Showroom' area.  This is where we as Progress use Arcade to offer evaluation environments for our products.  From a list of options, pre-determined by Progress, as a user you can select the Products and deployment configuration you'd like to evaluate, also with the choice of where geographically you'd like to run the servers, so if you're in Europe, select Europe, if you're in AP, select AP and Arcade will deploy the servers in your chosen region.  So that's great and everything, you get a set of servers with products installed to play with, but what do I do next?  Well another concept we've used for Arcade is the 'Out of the Cloud Experience'. 

 

'Out of Cloud Experience', what on earth does that mean???

 

Well, it wouldn't be much good if we provided you the evaluation environment, and when you logged on all you're presented with is a Desktop full of icons and told to have a nice day!  So in addition to the products being installed, we automatically install sample applications, such as AutoEdge, video's and guided tours that can walk you through some of the features and benefits of the products.  Once you've reviewed the content, you're then free to play and check out the products as needed.

 

So you're saying that as Progress, you're also using Arcade and the Cloud ?

 

Absolutely!  This is a great way for us to get product into the hands of customer and prospects without the need for them to download, install and configure product on their local machines.

 

Any more uses?

There are lots, and I could go on all day about this stuff, and believe me many people say I do!!

Looking back up the page I said this would be a quick post but already this is getting long, so I'll stop for now.  If after reading this you have any further comments or questions around Progress Arcade, please feel free to comment on this blog or email me directly (mormerod@progress.com).  As we go through our Beta Phase I'll come back and post more.  But for now, if you're still reading thanks for taking the time :-)

 

Mike

Kicking off 2011 in Sunny Florida...

We just got back from our ninth annual Global Partner Conference in Boca Raton – what a great way to kick off the New Year!  Especially in the warm 80 degrees weather as opposed to the stormy/wintery/snowy weather that has been happening every week here in Bedford!

Our Application Partners are very important to us, and this conference is our way of highlighting their great applications and ongoing participation in the Progress partner community. Their work extends the reach of our products even deeper into verticals that are near and dear to us. Our overall goal is to have our partners thrive and maintain success and we wanted them to connect and learn from each other at this week’s event.

At this year’s conference, we talked to many partners, including B&L Information Systems, Bluebird Auto Rental Systems, Franchise Technologies and others about their growth strategies for 2011 and how they have been able to focus on growth with the help of Progress tools. We love hearing success stories like these and will be bringing you some video content from various partners in the very near future.

We were also very excited to hear from QAD, Skyward, and VanMeijel about how OpenEdge BPM is helping them develop and deliver business process-enabled applications. These applications will give end users the capability to adjust and modify their business processes based on rapidly changing business and administrative needs.

Other key themes from the conference were integration and, once again, the Cloud. We heard from several speakers, including ZDNet’s Brian Sommer, Forrester’s John Rymer and others on some key integration best practices, how the industry is changing and speeding up overall, what it truly means to integrate your applications in the cloud, and how to communicate with new types of customers regarding their specific needs and solutions.

Finally, the conference would not have been complete without our annual awards ceremony, recognizing over 30 partners that were nominated based on their performance in the past year. Awards were given out in eight categories: Partner of the Year, Reseller of the Year, SaaS Excellence Award, Business Focus Award, Partner Collaboration Award, Fastest Growing Partner Award, Rising Star Award, and Innovator Award. Partner of the Year went to Epicor, an Elite Progress partner focused on the global Enterprise Software market.

We’ll be filling you in on more detail from specific sessions soon. Thanks again to all of our partners who attended the conference. We look forward to a great 2011!

So, you think you’re ready to deploy in the cloud?

Did you know that there are many layers of cloud computing? Most people would admit that there is a lot more to the CLOUD than they really understand - and that it takes a lot more to get to the cloud than you might think. The various aspects of cloud computing require different levels of expertise; here at Progress, we have decided to acquire this expertise by partnering with various companies, that play a role in cloud computing.

Over the next few weeks, we will look into the multiple layers and components that we believe you need to deploy an application successfully and efficiently in the cloud. Additionally, we’ll explain why and with whom we have formed relationships to ensure that YOU - our application partners and customers - have all the tools needed to deploy in the cloud.

 The first step to cloud deployment begins with Education. According to a recent report by Saugatuck Technology Inc, many CEOs are convinced that they can and will benefit from Cloud IT in some form, but they are at a loss as to where and how to begin.

There is definitely a lot of upfront education that anyone looking to deploy in the cloud needs to review. Cloud computing is a different style of computing, and it’s not so obvious.

I think that the first aspect of education begins with understanding what all of the cloud acronyms mean, such as SaaS, PaaS, IaaS. Here is a quick run down:

•  SaaS (Software as a Service) is a software business model that delivers software capabilities from a common set of computing resources accessible by users via the Internet. Rather than purchasing application licenses and installing the software on-premise, end users pay a usage or subscription fee and access the application that has been installed and maintained by the SaaS provider.
• PaaS (Platform as a Service) is the delivery of a computing platform and/or solution stack as a service that facilitates the development and/or deployment of applications without the cost and complexity of buying and managing the underlying hardware and software layers
•  IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) delivers the compute power and infrastructure - typically a virtualization environment - as a service. Rather than purchasing servers, data-center space or network equipment, clients instead access those resources as a fully outsourced service, and pay for and are provisioned only what they need.

We also have an introduction to cloud computing white paper on the Progress website that provides additional background information. You can download it here: http://web.progress.com/en/openedge/resources.html

So once you learn what all of the cloud acronyms and various terms mean, then it’s time to determine how it applies to you. You’ll need to think through how cloud computing will affect your business and how you want to move into the cloud. Then you will need to think about which approach best suits your needs.

We will cover some additional cloud considerations in future blog posts. Our next post will focus on public vs. private vs. hybrid clouds, and how you can decide which approach is right for you.

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!

 

OpenEdge Applications in the Amazon Cloud

Roy Ellis has been working for Progress Software since 1995. He started in Technical Support where he supported the Progress database on all operating systems for versions 6 to 8 before transitioning into development. He was a member of the development teams that brought you WebSpeed, AppServer, NameServer, AdminServer, and most recently OpenEdge Explorer and Management (formerly Fathom Management).  As a Principle QA Engineer he still regularly participates in customer calls with Technical Support. His most recent project is in the "Cloud", investigating and helping customers leverage the power of Amazon EC2 and OpenEdge.

Roy started working with the "Cloud" when he was asked to help an Application Partner deploy his SaaS (Software as a Service) Application to the Amazon EC2 (Elastic Cloud Compute) platform.  From the very beginning he was impressed by the potential of this emerging infrastructure.  The Amazon EC2 and S3 (Simple Storage Service) are the basis for Amazon's IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service).  This gives the ability to start, stop and manage virtual machines in the internet.  Amazon EC2 users can run any product they wish on these virtual machines.  They can backup and protect data in the internet on virtual file systems.  They have nearly unlimited resources at their disposal and they pay only for what you use!

Although there are many cloud providers available, OpenEdge started with Amazon, one of the largest providers, supporting both Windows and Linux operating systems.  Amazon has a very active development staff and has good documentation and forum support and they also have a very competitive pricing strategy.  Roy has written several "Getting Started" white papers to help users register with Amazon and then install and test their application in the Amazon Cloud and he's currently working on writing other best practices for the cloud.

Roy expects the Cloud to change the SaaS environment much in the way it has changed many other businesses and our everyday life.  The music industry is still trying to adapt to users purchasing music from the internet and not on media.  The television industry is currently seeing a shift to internet viewing and is struggling to adapt.  The telecommunication industry has probably changed the most so far.  And who can imagine a world without Facebook, instant messaging or Tweeting? 

Roy does not think all applications will be deployed to the "Cloud" but that it will become a powerful segment of the market.  The power of the internet will once again change business and as it does, Roy continues to investigate Cloud providers and services for OpenEdge Application Providers and for Release 11.

Join Roy and hundreds of other OpenEdge users for Progress Exchange Online on Tuesday, September 14^th at 11:15 AM EDT and hear Roy talk about OpenEdge Applications in the Amazon Cloud. To register, please visit www.progress.com/exchange2010

Learn the ABC’s on BTM with Progress® OpenEdge® in the Cloud on September 15th.

Gary Clink is an experienced OpenEdge Consultant and pre-sales Engineer working for Progress Software from their UK office. Gary joined Progress in 1999 having previously worked for a Direct End-User (DEU) in the Petrochemicals industry and also for an OpenEdge Application Partner (AP) working in the Transportation, Whisky (yes Whisky), and Personnel/Payroll industries.

Gary, having learned OpenEdge as part of his university degree, some 16 years ago, has always been interested in the rapid creation of business transaction processing applications. Gary has had a particular flair for development frameworks (having work with such frameworks as OpenStart, PS:eScript, Progress Dynamics, SmartObjects, and a number of others). Software Configuration Management has also played a key focus in Gary's career – having successfully deployed dozens of Roundtable TSMS implementations to address such things as version control, build management, deployment management, and legislative compliancy such as Sarbanes-Oxley.

Gary is currently focused as a Pre-Sales Engineer on helping large direct enterprise companies and government in the UK, Ireland and Scandinavia to expand their current Progress estate and to open up new technical and commercial possibilities using the complimentary products from Progress's extensive portfolio.

In Gary's session, Know your ABC's: Business Transaction Management with Progress OpenEdge in the Cloud, Gary will demonstrate how some of the complimentary Progress' products enhance the OpenEdge experience for business Transaction Management. Business Transaction Management (BTM) is a critical component in the new IT/Business relationship. Progress Actional, Progress's first class BTM product, translates data relating to an underlying IT estate into information that is relevant to various business stakeholders including Operations Staff, Application Development, quality Assurance, and Security & compliance personnel. With this knowledge the various stakeholders can make informed decisions, often proactively, to ensure the success of every critical Business Transactions necessary for the day-to-day running of a business. Progress Actional also offers the capabilities of automating operational Service Leven Agreements (SLA) against this estate, thus preventing issues or alerting appropriate staff to problems before they have even happened.

Based on the centuries old Hippocratic oath of "first do no harm!", all of this is achieved by using Progress Actional's patented technology; which combines centralized management with distributed policy evaluation, ensures no server bottlenecks and therefore no degradation in an applications performance. Actional has been performing this function for several years for technologies such as Java, .NET, Corba, Middleware, Enterprise Service Busses, WebService, MainFrame Integration, etc. Now, starting with OpenEdge 10.2B, support for the OpenEdge platform is also included for key components such as WebSpeed Transaction Server, WebService Adaptors, Sonic Adaptors, AppServers, AppServer Internet Adaptors, and OpenEdge batch clients. What's really exciting is that all of this is achieved without having to modify your existing application, changed your application's behavior or write a single line of new ABL code. In addition to examining OpenEdge's support for Actional, during this session we'll also see how Progress Actional can be used alongside the Amazon Web Service (AWS) platform for application monitoring and Service Level Agreement (SLA) Management on the Cloud.

Come and join Gary in his session "Know Your ABC's: Business Transaction Management with Progress OpenEdge in the Cloud" on Wednesday, September 15, 2010 at 9:45 a.m. EDT. To register for Progress Exchange Online 2010, go to www.progress.com/exchange2010