View from the Edge

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.

Where will new ISVs come from?

Someone asked me the other day whether OpenEdge is attracting new ISVs and if so where are they coming from.  The answer to the first part is yes – we do attract a number of new ISVs every year who develop brand new applications using OpenEdge.  As we’ve been at this for a long time, the numbers of new ISVs are nowhere near where they were back 10 to 15 years ago but there has been a steady flow each and every year for the last 5 years. 

The second part of the question is more interesting; where are they coming from?  The trend has clearly changed over the last 3 to 4 years.  A recent industry study I saw showed a 3% decline in the number of software companies due to consolidation.  Clearly fewer new ISVs are being created today than in the past and not enough to offset consolidation.

 The vast majority of new ISVs over the past 3 or more years have been pure Software as a Service (SaaS) applications. Many are offshoots of existing ISVs or customers that decide they can attack a new market and create a brand new SaaS application to attract a new base of customers. 

There are several advantages to starting a new SaaS enterprise, not to mention the most obvious; it is the only way to attract outside capital.  Many traditional, on-premise ISVs that add a SaaS version of their application, quickly realize it is a very different business from traditional applications.  Being a separate entity with separate sales, marketing, development and support has its advantages.  It allows you to more rapidly respond to the needs of your SaaS customers where “service” and “speed” are the key differentiators. 

So will SaaS and Cloud infrastructure accelerate the market for new ISVs?  I’m not talking writing an app to monitor golf handicaps but honest to goodness business applications. I’d be interested in your views.

The Four Pillars of transitioning to the SaaS/Cloud Business Model…

I have the pleasure of spending a vast majority of my time working with ISVs or as well call them APs on their business strategy, specifically those that are looking to move from a traditional software business model to that of a Software as a Service(SaaS) business model.  Yesterday I was reading a favorite blog of mine Phil Wainewright’s Software as Services ZDnet Blog (http://blogs.zdnet.com/SAAS/) and I thought it was a very insightful piece on the Four Pillars of the Transition to SaaS.  The four pillars he highlights are:

Partner strategy. It’s clear that providers have to work with partners— but it’s equally clear that the old partner models have to be radically revised.

Pricing, packaging and selling. Makes a huge difference in timespan and ease or difficulty of the sales cycle, and the value of upsells and renewals. Once these decisions have been taken, there’s then the question of how to organize and incent the sales process.

As-a-service infrastructure. A highly automated operational infrastructure is needed to deliver the necessary partner, sales and customer relations in a cost-effective and responsive manner.

Customer relationships. Moving from a product sales cycle to a continuous, iterative service provider relationship is a complete culture change both for vendors and for their customers.

It is as though he has been on the phone with me and talking to our APs – the only thing that I would change is the order, as the biggest obstacle for most of our APs is the PRICING, PACKAGING and SELLING.  I work very closely with our partners to help them understand that SaaS is not just a pricing model – but the pricing is critical to the successful transition to the SaaS business model.   Understanding the target market and who the buyer is and how they are looking to consume the service is absolutely critical to understand, before making the transition.

Next, I would put the infrastructure requirements – only because that is a “COST” factor in the delivery of the service – so you need to understand your underlying costs – before you price and package your offering – so that one is also a critical component.

I would be remiss if I did not next say that the “CUSTOMER” is next on the list.  I mentioned before knowing your “buyer” is important – but just as critical is the understanding of the customer relationship on a go-forward basis.  You are no longer just selling them a piece of software or an application.  In the SaaS business model – you are now a SERVICE provider and the relationship that you have with your customer is just different.  You are now their “go to” person whenever anything goes wrong…and so you need to be prepared to address all of their business requirements.  Otherwise they will leave you and go elsewhere.

Finally, the PARTNER STRATEGY, but I would look carefully at this in more than just one dimension.  The partnering strategy changes considerably in a SaaS model – mostly because you are now most likely relying on multiple players for successful delivery of your service/product to the customer.  For example – there is the provider of the Internet connection for your customer, there is the hosting or Cloud provider that will be responsible for the hardware, virtualization and operating system delivery and finally there is who you will partner with to deliver the integration and the access to other applications that need to work very closely with your business application.  There might even be someone in your ecosystem that in the past has delivered training and/or implementation services for your application – the question then is: are they still needed? If not, what have you done to your application to make it easier for end-users to get up to speed and knowledgeable on using the application?  Have you investigated the “ease of use” aspect of your SaaS application – or are you still thinking “old school”?  Is your application now more likely to be part of a broader ecosystem and how do you fit into that system? 

These are just some of the questions that you need to be thinking about as you transition to a SaaS business model.  Most of our APs that have made the transition will tell you that after a few years, it can turn out to be a very lucrative growth model.  However, that does not mean that it was an easy transition.  But just keep in mind we are here to help, as we also have thought about our partnering strategy as it relates to the SaaS business model.  As always – any questions – feel free to contact me at cosmith@progress.com.

Exchange Online 2009 - Behind the Scenes

In early Spring 2009, when we began planning our first online conference, we had no idea what to do. We knew that we wanted to do something unique and different, but had no idea how long it would take get things done, what would be hard or easy, or how many people we would need. We didn't even know the right questions to ask. I spent a number of weeks educating myself, looking at and participating in online conferences other companies, universities, and organizations like the Smithsonian Museum were doing. Among other things, I spoke at BravePoint's Virtual InterChange conference, which allowed me to see what's involved in doing a live broadcast.

We eventually decided to do something akin to a TV "newsmagazine" style broadcast with a number of separate programs and "episodes", using a variety of media and techniques. What we produced in the end was, on the one hand, not too far from that, and on the other, not at all like that.

We had numerous discussions about what to do, how to do it, and who we could get to help.  Also many arguments about things which turned out not to be important in the end. Key to helping figure it out and get it all done was Cramer, a production company that has done a lot of work for us in the past for our F2F (face-to-face) conferences and all sorts of videos.

Among the things we discussed endlessly were how many technical sessions we should have and how long they should be. Would anyone come? How long an attention span would an online audience have? How many days would be people be willing to "tune in"? For how long? 2 hours? 4 ?  6 ? Would people leave if there was "dead air"?  What should we do about people in different timezones? How many sessions would we have time to produce? Is live or recorded better? Which is harder to do? We got many different answers to these questions. In the end we decided on two concurrent video "channels" starting with general sessions followed by a series of 30 minute technical sessions with a short question-and-answer period in the last few minutes of each one, and a live discussion channel. The sessions were recorded but the q&a period was live. Would that work? We wouldn't know until we actually did it.

When we opened the conference registration site, we got a huge surprise. After two days, we saw that about two hundred people had registered. Then, over the weekend, registrations spiked up over 3,000 and continued rising. At first we were thrilled. Then we learned that someone had posted a link to our registration page on several sites that enabled people to find places where they could get free stuff. We had free stuff. Anyone who registered would get a free T-shirt. Over 4,000 people who had no interest in the conference had signed up just for the free shirt. What else could go wrong? I loaded all the registration information into an OpenEdge database and wrote a 4GL program to rank all the registrations and identify the bogus ones so we could delete them.

Gradually, things came together and all the speakers got their materials prepared and practiced their talks. In early August, we began filming. I spent 4 weeks at Cramer's studios, working with the speakers while we were filming and then with Cramer's folks (thanks Theo!) editing video while others worked on the web site, registration, promotion, and many other things. It was a lot of work but it was fun.

Finally we were ready. The conference broadcast went live at 8:30 am on September 15. We held our breath. Everything worked, with only a few small technical glitches. Here's a picture of the control room for one of the channels.

When the broadcast was finally finished on the third day, we were relieved.  We made it.

As we discovered, 30 minute sessions worked pretty well. Almost. In hindsight, we learned that:

0) 23 minutes of content with 7 minutes of q&a time didn't allow enough time for questions for most of the sessions,

1) our speakers were not used to speaking for such short periods and had some difficulty with that,

3) there were (deliberately) no breaks between the end of one session and the start of the next. Feedback says we should have had them,

4) the "networking lounge" and discussions were hard to use and didn't work as nearly as well as they should have. In spite of the difficulty some good discussion did take place.

Still, I think those were relatively small problems.  In the grand scheme of things, I would say Exchange Online 2009 was a success.

Session videos for the Exchange Online 2009 conference are still available for viewing for another month.  If you haven't had a chance to visit, please point your browser to http://events.unisfair.com/rt/exchangeonline~sept2009

Obrigado

If you have been following this blog lately you can see there has been a lot of focus on customer-facing engagements including Exchange Online, the UK PUG, and Australia Exchange.  I just returned from the Brazil Exchange event, I’ll tell you about that in a minute, and you’ll hear about other events in upcoming posts about other customer facing events over the next few days.

So do we do it?  Why so many events?  Well we think we have an exciting and compelling strategy with OpenEdge 10.2B being released in a few weeks, work starting on OpenEdge 11, and a lot of focus on SaaS and Cloud.  But we also want to hear from you.  So speak up and be counted.  Make sure your account team knows about your issues  and concerns, go to a local PUG event or other regional event, and tell the Progress representative what you think, or head over to Progress Communities , and  layout your thoughts in one of our forums.

But now onto Brazil.  Brazil Exchange, held in Sao Paulo on Oct. 21, was another extremely successful event with over 525 attendees.  The general session was very much focused on Operational Responsiveness and how the entire Progress portfolio of products can help you achieve Operational Responsiveness.  As part of the General Session, Rick Kuzyk put together a very exciting demo showing OpenEdge, Apama, Sonic, and Actional all working together to provide real-time visibility in an automobile manufacturing yard complete with a mashup using Google maps, and showed the dashboard running on an iPhone.  Very slick!!

And there were 15 different breakout sessions covering OpenEdge, Actional, and Apama, and while they were “all Portuguese to me” (literally - except for mine and Rick’s), there was lots of interest in the key capabilities that we are providing including OpenEdge GUI for .NET (sold out crowd) , OpenEdge support for Actional, OpenEdge Management, and RIA.

Excellent job by the Brazilian team, and I would like to thank all of our Brazilian customers for attending this event. 

And don’t forget, there is a great collection of presentations still available on the Exchange Online site, so check it out because it all goes away on December 17^th!!!

Ken

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 

Australia The Tour, Part 2: Brisbane

Today we swapped sun soaked Brisbane for rain soaked Melbourne as we continue on our 3 city Australian Exchange tour.  Our final set of presentations are tomorrow (Friday) before we make the long journey back to Boston. OK, I know, you have no sympathy :)

But back to yesterday.  Brisbane was completely booked with once again 50+ people attending the day long event.  Brisbane certainly has it's own vibe, a little more relaxed than Sydney, but no less eager to participate.  During the tour I've been fortunate enough to share the OpenEdge roadmap detailing some of our thoughts and ideas for the next generation of OpenEdge.  Out of the potentially many new features, the one stand out proposal that generates the most questions & excitement is that of Multi-Tenancy.  Even for those not yet considering Software as a Service (SaaS), the thought of OpenEdge as a platform having built-in Multi-Tenancy capabilities right out of the box is a game changer.  Especially, if as hoped, it can be introduced in such a way that means little to no application changes for the thousands of OpenEdge applications out there today.  This feature alone would consolidate OpenEdge's leadership in the SaaS space offering end-users a huge library of Multi-Tenant applications almost over night.

As we've seen from other conferences, including the recent Exchange Online, the current hot feature in the product today is the OpenEdge GUI for .NET.  Shelley is constantly presenting to packed rooms, full of partners & direct customers eager to know how to make use of this great feature.  I had no personal involvement in the project that created it whatsoever, but each time I sit at the back of the room and listen to Shelley go through her pitch, my mind is always blown away by the engineering triumph that basically allows the running of a Visual Studio environment in OpenEdge Architect which is based upon Eclipse.  Not only that, but the fact that you can mix & match existing OpenEdge GUI with this next generation OpenEdge GUI for .NET is just a testament to the technical skills within Progress.  

As with Sydney, it was also good to see by show of hands how many people are currently using OpenEdge 10 and OpenEdge Architect.  I won't get on my soapbox again, but still it's good to see!

From a purely personal perspective, I'm also impressed by the number of people that have taken the OpenEdge Reference Architecture (OERA) to heart and are really embracing it's principles as they take their applications forwards.  One of the challenges we always face is knowing how well our best practices materials are being received, and used, so events like this give me the opportunity to talk to partners and gauge feedback.  So if you ever see me at any of our events feel free to grab me and give feedback.  I won't bite, promise!

We had a fantastic time in Brisbane and certainly from the feedback at the end of day Cocktail party, the attendees were going home happy after a full days content. Or maybe that was just the free booze talking!!

So tomorrow is our final day and if it's anything like the past few days it will be a blast.  We did by the way gain our hour back when we flew south from Brisbane to Melbourne, not that I still understand how it works.  I had some discussions at the cocktail party about this, but again all the reasons seemed to tie back to the cows!  Either that, or it's all about reducing the hours of sun light so as not to fade curtains!!

As always, thanks for reading

Mike

Australia The Tour, Part 1: Sydney

We finally arrived in Sydney on Friday, after leaving Boston on Wednesday, 20+ hours of flying and somehow managing to misplace Thursday!  If you've ever had the chance to travel 'down under' you'll know that the journey is well worth the effort.  I've been fortunate in my working life to travel to many cities around the world, and I must say that Sydney is one of the few I could happily call home.  Don't get too excited though Ken, I will be returning back to Boston...this time!!

I'm writing this post on Tuesday from Brisbane, the day after the PTW event in Sydney.  And what a great event it was.  The registrations were fully booked out with 50+ people attending the day long festivities.  As I mentioned in my previous post there was lots of great content, much of which which was delivered by local Progress employee's with Shelley and I delivering a few sessions each.  At the close of the event even I was starting to get fed up of me speaking, so thanks to all those who stuck with me through my sessions and didn't fall asleep, or if you did, thanks for not snoring :)

It was a great chance to catch up and talk with many Application Partners and Direct Customers about their current situations and challenges going forward, in addition to hopefully answering a question or two.  No matter where I go in the world I'm always impressed with attendee's passion for OpenEdge and what they do with it.  It was also great to note the number of hands that were raised when the room was asked who's currently using OpenEdge Architect.  If you're reading this and you're not currently using OpenEdge Architect, I strongly recommend you go and have a look at the latest version in OpenEdge 10.2a, it really does make you more productive as a developer.  And that's not just marketing speak, a number of people yesterday were more than happy to extol it's virtues.

So many thanks to all those that attended the Sydney event and helped make it a great success.

We've now rolled into Brisbane where we'll present the same event again to a new audience. I must say, it's strange to fly an hour North from Sydney to Brisbane, and then have to alter my watch an hour back!  I kind of understand it when you travel East/West, but North??  The locals tell me it's something to do with the cows!!!

I'm not sure what's going on with the weather since we arrived, but we seem to have brought the New England rain with us.  The weekend weather in Sydney was full of showers, and when we arrived in Brisbane is was approaching 80+ degree heat and sunny, but we've been here a couple of hours and now it's throwing it down with rain!!

From what I understand Brisbane is fully subscribed so it should be another great event.  I'll keep you posted, and next time remind me to tell you about the will power of an architect and a certain Australian biscuit/cookie.

Thanks for reading

Mike

We're off to see the wizard !

And no, I don't mean Gus. I'm currently sat on the tarmac at Logan airport about to head for L.A on the way to Sydney Australia. Ok, so the title was a little corny! This is a posting full of firsts. My first blog entry on the OpenEdge Perspective, the first posted from an iPhone (so appologies for typos), and my travelling companion Shelleys first trip to Australia. By way of introduction I'm Mike Ormerod and I'm responsible for the Architectural Best Practices, SaaS & Cloud Computing technical strategy for OpenEdge. In my role I report to our VP of Technology Ken Wilner, the guy with the beard in the photos at the side there! We're headed to Australia to present at a series of PTWs located in 3 cities. As we go we will blog more to let you know how the trip is going. The conference agenda is packed full of great sessions with great content so we hope to see lots of familiar, as well as hopefully new faces at the events. The cabin doors are about to close so thanks for now and we look forward to saying more once we hit Sydney!