View from the Edge

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

Canada Tech Peaks and PUG Meeting

My journey to Canada began with a flight from Manchester New Hampshire to Toronto on a sunny and mild Tuesday afternoon. I was thinking how convenient it was to fly from my home airport rather than having to take the drive and fight the traffic around Boston. The plot thickened when I was led out onto the tarmac to board a twin-propeller plane that holds somewhere around 20 passengers. I especially enjoyed the baggage handler on the ground, who, once everyone was on the plane, boarded, took off their reflective vest, closed the cabin door, and took their seat as the co-pilot for the flight! With good weather on our side, the flight was smooth and uneventful.   

The turnout for the Tech Peaks meeting on Wednesday morning was excellent- around 25 or so attended. By a show of hands, many turned out to be long-time Progress customers, some for over 20 years. My presentation topic was the OpenEdge Strategy and Roadmap, and among other things, helped the audience understand why Software as a Service is something that will likely have an impact on their business over the next few years, if it hasn't already. The audience was most engaged in dialog on the upcoming Transparent Data Encryption for 10.2B, and the future OE11 multi-tenant table support. I was followed by Frank da Costa who gave an excellent presentation and demonstration of Actional monitoring an OpenEdge environment, a new capability for 10.2B. The audience gained an appreciation for how easy and fast it is, without having to do any coding changes, for Actional to automatically build a map of the transaction flows through the system, the level of detail that is available from the console, and the ease that rules can be established to, in real time, monitor and alert on things like Service Level Agreements.

Almost forgot to mention that the hotel conference room looked out on 2 sides to an indoor shopping mall. I especially enjoyed the people who stopped to stare in the window to see what was going on- maybe new potential cutomers! While this wasn't an actual photo from the event, there was a small boy around 3-4 years old that did spend a minute with us looking in.

My second stop was in Montreal for a Thursday afternoon Progress User Group (PUG) meeting. The attendance here was also good- in the 20's, and the presentation topics were the same. I was taken slightly by surprise when the PUG President opened the meeting speaking in French, with the follow on topic on the Progress corporate overview also delivered in French. It was interesting to try and follow along, but the jokes went right over my head.

I was pleased to see that many in attendance had already made the move to OpenEdge 10.2A, taking advantage of the latest features that we have to offer. With 10.2B coming out soon, and planning underway for a major new OE11 release, anyone who currently finds themselves working with an older version of Progress/OpenEdge should take a look to see what new features they could be using to improve their business, and how they can get up-to-date. Progress Communities is always a great resource for information.

Thanks to all who coordinated and supported these events- it's easy to overlook the work done behind the scenes to make these events both possible and successful.

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! 

OpenEdge Architect: Why Not?

I met with some of the members of the New England PUG (Progress User Group) today.  We talked about several things and asked them many questions.  Among those questions were these:
    1) Are you using OpenEdge Architect today?
    2) If not, why not?

There were not many using the product (I remember one hand going up), and there were several reasons why not.  In general, there seemed to be a fear to give up the development tool they were currently using.  Fair enough.  When I get my hands on any tool that I really like and am comfortable with I tend to keep it.  And I'm pretty hesitant to have anyone take it from me.

So here's a few questions that I want you to weigh in on:

1. The same questions that I asked the NE PUG?  Are you using OpenEdge Architect today and if not why not?
2. Assuming you are not, what would it take to introduce you to the tool and get you using it?  Is it a case of not wanting to give up the old tool to get the new?  Are you worried about it being as good as your existing tool?  Compatibility issues? 

To burn off the stress of being in the software industry, I turn perfectly good pieces of wood into useless sawdust.  OK, on a good day that's called "woodworking".  Over the years, I've learned both the comfort of an old, familiar tool and the joy of finding things that I can do with new tools.   It's no different with software tools.  We  want you to be  comfortable and confident with your tools, but we also want to introduce you to new capabilities and methodologies.

So tell us what it would take to move you from your current tools to OpenEdge Architect.  We've got a big new release coming up in 2008 and OpenEdge Architect will be an integral part of the capabilities in that release.  So let's do some work now to get ready together.