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.

How You Might Get Started With Cloud Computing

In making the trans-Atlantic crossing from Europe to North America recently, I was reminded of “the cloud” in a somewhat different way. All flights from northern Europe were being diverted to the “northern route” due to volcanic activity in Iceland. How amazing and unexpected to be flying over Iceland (and Greenland) during the trip. As luck would have it, I was sitting on the left side of the airplane, so had a clear view of the cloud of ash being hurled into the air and sent eastward towards Europe as we flew north of the volcano Eyjafjallajökull (EY-ya-fyat-lah-YO-kut for those that want to impress their friends).

The cloud of ash got me to thinking about the recent Face2Face Progress Forums that I participated in during my visit to Europe, and the conversations we had around cloud computing. I think that it’s safe to say that people are just at the beginning stages of learning about what this new capability is, and perhaps are some time away from embracing how cloud computing can be applied to their own business situation. At the same time, there are pundits who believe that cloud computing is as significant of a technology trend as the move to client-server computing in the 1990’s- a disruptive technology change similar in some ways to the travel disruptions caused by volcanic ash clouds.

So what should OpenEdge users make of cloud computing at the moment? First, it’s probably not a passing fad but something that will become pervasive in the computing industry over time. Second, while it may not be obvious today exactly what the impact of cloud computing will be to your organization, the more you can learn now the better positioned you will be when it does become more obvious.

So practically speaking, what can you do to learn more about cloud computing? There is of course a wealth of information readily available over the internet, including papers available from Progress located on PSDN in Progress Communities (communities.progress.com). In addition, 2 low-risk events are becoming popular: holding training that involves hands-on lab exercises using cloud resources, and using the cloud to support the product demonstration phase of the sales cycle.

For training, rather than pre-configure a set of hardware resources that you own or rent, you can configure an image in the cloud and then on the day of the training you simply start up “n” machines in the cloud that use that image, something that takes just a few minutes. Each student has access to their own personal machine, and the cost to set up and run these resources is surprisingly low. If you are interested in seeing how this works, consider joining the Netherlands PUG (Progress User Group) workshop on GUI for .NET scheduled for June 3- it is free to attend and the labs will all be run out of the cloud.

For product demonstration, your sales team no longer has to maintain demo software on their personal laptops, but instead simply connect to the cloud from the customer location and access the pre-configured image that contains the demo software and related environment. The benefits are many, including improved agility in enhancing your demo and making that quickly available to the entire team. 

The next time you ponder the volcanic ash cloud that continues to be in the headlines, or simply the clouds drifting overhead, give some thought as to how you can get started with cloud computing.

UK and Scandinavian PUG Events

We made a key part of our strategy for 2010 support for the OpenEdge community. We think we have a very compelling story with what we have delivered in OpenEdge 10.2B, and what we are working on in OpenEdge 11. Everything we are hearing supports that so we want to ensure that the story is getting out.

In that vein, we are providing strong support for the numerous PUG (Progress User Group) events that are being held around the world. In fact a couple of weeks ago I was in the London at the UK PUG event held in our corporate offices in Slough and in Lillehammer, Norway (O.K. It was actually Øyer) presenting to a combined Sweden/Norway Pug event.

Both events had 40-50 people, a nice collection of sessions covering a broad range of topics including several sessions by me. At both events I shared with the attendees the Progress vision for Operational Responsiveness, and introduced them to RPM (Responsive Process Management). I also reviewed with them the key features in OpenEdge 10.2B including Transparent Data Encryption, and introduced them to some of the key features in OpenEdge 11 including Multi-tenant Tables, Multi-tenant AppServer, and our thoughts around automated deployment to the cloud.

In Norway I also went into detail in terms of a number of best practices around building SaaS including multi-tenancy, UI flexibility, etc.

And there were lots of other great sessions as well. In the UK, British Airways gave a very comprehensive session on how they used Sonic, Actional, and DataXtend to build out a robust SOA infrastructure. Gary Clink showed how to achieve Business Transaction Assurance within your IT infrastructure using Actional and the AutoEdge sample application. There were other great sessions on SaaS, OO, and BI as well.

In Norway, Jarmo Nieminen gave an introduction to OpenEdge Architect, OpenEdge Replication, and OpenEdge Management.

Two of Progress' technology partners, Mike Fechner and Robert Prediger showed how OpenEdge is open and flexible enough that you can really use it with whatever UI technology you want. Mike showed how the OpenEdge GUI for .NET is great for building compelling desktop UIs and showed some tools that simplify migrating from the OpenEdge GUI to the GUI for .NET.

Robert showed how you can build AJAX style UIs for your OpenEdge application and showed off his Backbase-enabled framework to help you get there.

And there were other sessions on the latest Progress corporate positioning, and on application and database tuning as well.

But the PUGs are not just about learning and technical content. They are about socializing and networking with your peers in the OpenEdge community. It's about building the relationships that will help you to be more effective down the road at doing your job. In the UK they had a very comfortable dinner on the evening before the event. And in Norway they did something that truly fit in with the culture and environment that we were in and is certainly fits in with what I like to do best. I think these videos speak for themselves.

So if you are not a member of your local PUG, please join. And if you are a member, plan to go to the next event. Offer to do a session that you think will help the other members. Not only will you learn something, and help others learn, but you will meet a lot of good people, and have a lot of fun.

Ken Wilner

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.