MultiValue Industry's End of Year Recap
The "End of Year" recap is a special feature to International Spectrum magazine that is done at the end of the year every year. International Spectrum contacted all of its regular advertisers and conference sponsors and asked them to answer three questions: What new features or services did you introduce in 2010; what was the greatest or most exciting thing that happened to your company or product in 2010; and what would you like Spectrum readers to watch for in 2011? Here are the responses we received.
AccuSoft Enterprises
Q: What new features or services did you introduce in 2010?
AccuSoft Enterprises released AccuTerm 7 in May 2010. AccuTerm 7 was designed for Windows 7 and has a completely modernized user interface, while retaining compatibility with Windows XP and Vista. GUI programs developed with AccuTerm automatically acquire the modernized look when run using AccuTerm 7. Besides a traditional installation, AccuTerm 7 can be installed on a portable device such as a USB stick and run on most any Windows machine directly from the stick. A stand-alone installation is also supported for situations where administrator privileges are not available.
Q: What would you like Spectrum readers to watch for in 2011?
AccuTerm 7 will be enhanced to include full Unicode / UTF-8 support in 2011. We are also anticipating support for AccuTerm 7 under Wine on Linux and CrossOver on Mac next year, which will allow AccuTerm to run on those platforms without Windows.
DesignBais
Q: What new features or services did you introduce in 2010?
DesignBais release 6 represents a major enhancement to the DesignBais product suit. It includes.
- Google-style word indexing and selection, providing key-stroke response to field entry.
- Native cross browser support.
- Enhanced eXpress reporting.
- Drill-into reporting.
- Job Scheduler suite.
Q: What was the greatest or most exciting thing that happened to your company or product in 2010?
There were/are lots of things happening to the DesignBais product suite in 2010. DesignBais development is now faster. The native support for cross-browser enables DesignBais applications to run on all of the major browsers, further extending your application's reach.
The Google-style indexing function will significantly change the way your application interacts with your end-users and will introduce a level of intuitiveness and excellence that will ensure the success of your application. Release 6.0 will be available in December and we believe that it represents another revolutionary leap for MultiValue developers.
In 2010, we have introduced DesignBais to a number of new developers and are extremely excited by the quality of the applications that have been produced. It is great to see MultiValue developers significantly growing their business and we are extremely excited to be part of their continued success.
In 2010, DesignBais also became a Rocket U2 Technology Partner.
Q: What would you like Spectrum readers to watch for in 2011?
2011 will be about improving our education and training programs. We have spent a great deal of time in 2010 refining our training tools, and in 2011 we will be making these tools more accessible to everyone. There will be more webinar training programs with greater emphasis on detail. We will not be running any further lengthy webinar training programs, but will be conducting many short programs. Each program will be about fifteen minutes long and will cover a single topic. This will make the recording and re-production of the sessions much easier than the previous ninety minute versions. These new webinar programs will, by the end of the first quarter 2011, be the basis of our online training library.
In 2010, we have seen a number of new DesignBais applications built for mobile and POS devices. With the advent of our commercial-grade cross-browser support, we envisage that a number of our developer partners will be making greater use of devices like the iPad to provide browser-based applications solutions that will reach everybody, anywhere, anytime.
Entrinsik
Q: What new features or services did you introduce in 2010?
Entrinsik's Informer is a web-based operational business intelligence solution enabling over a thousand organizations to access real-time data from multiple sources quickly and easily, extending self-service reporting and analysis capabilities to users who can uncover critical insights in the information they work with every day by querying, reporting, analyzing, delivering, and displaying data in any way they choose.
In 2010, Entrinsik announced the latest release of their Informer — Informer 4.2. Informer's new plug-in architecture allows developers to amend and extend core Informer functionality for seamless integration into existing organizational environments. This latest release of Informer represents a giant leap forward for the software.
With Informer 4.2, Entrinsik is now able to offer Informer Partners and end user administrators the ability to do things like provide end user authentication and single sign-on within Informer, rebrand the user interface, and even develop known quality reports and mappings to bundle with the installation package to speed rollout. With examples and documentation provided with the new release, Partners and Informer administrators can now create a highly integrated reporting environment customized to meet specific organizational needs.
Q: What was the greatest or most exciting thing that happened to your company or product in 2010?
Entrinsik held their first Informer User Conference (ICON2010) on October 11-12th, 2010. The conference was attended by Informer administrators, end users and Partners and included breakout sessions with members of the Informer product development team, panel discussions on best practices and methodologies, one-on-one product training and networking with Informer users from other organizations. Conference attendees had the exclusive opportunity to enhance their Informer knowledge and learn about all of the exciting developments that Entrinsik has planned for Informer. Based on feedback received from attendees, the conference was a huge success:
"For your first conference, I felt it was superior to some I've attended for years!! Great job! Presentations were great — end users could understand them, no matter their level of expertise."
"Great staff — very intelligent, knowledgeable, yet very personable... most grateful for the resources given to us."
"It was refreshing to attend a conference where the participants genuinely like the company and enjoy using the product. Made for a very pleasant conference."
Entrinsik collected lots of great ideas from the almost 200 attendees on how to make the conference even better, and have already begun planning the next one.
Q: What would you like Spectrum readers to watch for in 2011?
With the release of 4.2, Informer now includes all the base functions of the 3.0 series, the plug-in architecture to allow our VAR partners to fully incorporate Informer into their application, and the infrastructure to facilitate continual expansion of supported platforms. Several NEW R&D activities have been fired up. Projects underway or being planned are:
- Support for the Raining Data D3 database.
- Dash board presentation.
- Integration with Share Point.
- Expansion of graphical functions.
InterSystems
Q: What new features or services did you introduce in 2010?
InterSystems Corporation launched CACHÉ 2010 in September. Of special interest in this new release is the introduction of CACHÉ Database Mirroring innovative technology that takes high-availability solutions to a new level. Database Mirroring provides a reliable, robust automated solution for both planned and unplanned downtime at a cost that will have a very positive impact on the IT bottom line.
CACHÉ Database Mirroring provides automatic failover between any two CACHÉ-based systems, without the need for specialized, expensive storage and networking hardware and software. In addition to providing high availability at lower cost, key benefits include:
- Flexibility for Planned Downtimes Configuration changes or operating system upgrades affecting one CACHÉ-based application can be executed with minimal impact on overall application availability or performance against Service Level Agreements.
- Minimized Risk CACHÉ Database Mirroring utilizes an easy-to-implement model that removes complexity from the configuration equation. And, by using logical data replication, mirroring reduces risks such as out-of-order updates and carry-forward corruption that are possible in the physical replication technologies used by other systems.
- Business Continuity Support Mirrored databases can be housed in separate data centers, so continuity of key business operations is ensured in the event of a disaster.
Q: What was the greatest or most exciting thing that happened to your company or product in 2010?
During 2010 many of our application partners deployed their MultiValue applications to their customer base with expanded functionality.
- Over 80 end user sites deployed with a newly designed browser based front end preserving legacy business logic.
- Ensemble Work Flow enhanced an existing application stream lining claims processing increasing revenue realization. This also allows the application partner to take on new business supported with existing staff.
Q: What would you like Spectrum readers to watch for in 2011?
2011 will see several application partners deploying their MultiValue applications on Caché. These applications offer solutions for retail, medical and banking. Several application partners are planning to incorporate DeepSee (our embedded business intelligence product) and Ensemble (our integration and work flow platform) into their product offerings.
Key Ally
Q: What new features or services did you introduce in 2010?
2010 was all about abandoning Windows-only approaches by using web front ends for even trivial internal applications.
Q: What was the greatest or most exciting thing that happened to your company or product in 2010?
I got to spend time extending software for a client who was using the application I worked on in my very first job. Revisiting that code has helped me gain perspective on everything I've learned since my first job.
Q: What would you like Spectrum readers to watch for in 2011?
Spectrum readers need to watch for the real Web revolution. We are reaching the tipping point where the amount of code needed to get a browser perform is too great and the browsers themselves are bloating up. I expect that 2011 will see some radical new browser design, one that makes browsers more like terminals in terms of persistence and screen management without losing everything that makes the browser graphically superior.
LadyBridge
Q: What new features or services did you introduce in 2010?
Much of this year has been devoted to security and resilience. We introduced a package of enhancements to provide greater control over system security, including the option to impose tighter restrictions on use of QMNet to access data on remote servers and restrictions on which accounts a user may access.
The first element of the resilience package, data replication, was launched in October 2010. QM's data replication system is very flexible, allowing cascading of updates through layers of servers and symmetrical replication where updates can be applied in either direction. The latter feature is very powerful but requires some care in implementation.
The second element of the resilience package, journaling, is scheduled to be released by the end of the year. This includes both roll forward and roll backward recovery.
Q: What was the greatest or most exciting thing that happened to your company or product in 2010?
At the 2010 Spectrum Conference, we displayed a sign indicating that we had achieved over 100 new commercial QM installations in the last 100 days. At the time of writing (mid-October), we are still ahead of the one installation per day target and expect this to continue to the end of the year. We think that this verifies that QM is now a well established player in the MultiValue market.
Strictly not 2010 but right in the last few days of 2009, Nashville based Information Capital, suppliers of local government software solutions, ported a toolkit comprising over 100,000 programs to QM. This toolkit forms the basis for applications developed by their six subsidiary companies.
Q: What would you like Spectrum readers to watch for in 2011?
QM is well established in countries with languages that can be represented in an 8-bit character set. We have begun planning for support of multi-byte character sets to help take QM into the Far East and other areas that require extended character sets.
MITS
Q: What new features or services did you introduce in 2010?
We released MITS Report version 3.0, which includes an array of new features designed to put more power in the hands of the users. These features will help free up busy IT resources while ensuring data security and maintaining overall system performance.
Q: What was the greatest or most exciting thing that happened to your company or product in 2010?
As with any major technology advancement, the true value of the new capabilities in MITS Report 3.0 become clearly evident through everyday use. The new Calculated Columns feature in version 3.0 provides significantly enhanced flexibility by allowing users to create new columns based on the values in existing columns and incorporate them into their reports. The Date Range Columns feature enables comparative and trend-focused reporting by accumulating numeric columns by month, quarter, or year. We have also added a new Ranking enhancement which helps identify sweet spots as well as areas that need attention.
These new features add even more flexibility to the already powerful MITS Report tool set, making it even easier to perform rapid, detailed analysis of operational data.
Q: What would you like Spectrum readers to watch for in 2011?
Keep your eyes open for a new version of MITS Discover, which will include new features designed to make your life easier.
Major Improvements to the Build Scheduler: We are in the process of rewriting of our MITS Discover Hypercube Build Scheduler from the ground up. The new scheduler will provide more flexibility in scheduling jobs and it will do a better job of providing status both during and after the completion of the process(es).
User Interface Improvements: Many of the older-styled interface pages are being rewritten to add functionality and make them easier to navigate.
Dashboard Improvements: Watch for improvements in the way users create and launch their MITS dashboards, including the ability to export a MITS dashboard to an Adobe PDF file.
NorthgateArinso
Q: What new features or services did you introduce in 2010?
NorthgateArinso continues to offer long term contracts and flexible license models to its increasing base of new customers. 2010 saw an impressive reception to NorthgateArinso's modernization strategy, where we take legacy green screen applications and migrate them to GUI and web environments. This not only keeps MultiValue in these businesses but demonstrates how MultiValue can integrate with leading edge technologies. NorthgateArinso also showed Reality integration with Google APIs and other connectivity through various webinars as well as presentations to Pick User Groups.
At the International Spectrum 2010 show, NorthgateArinso demonstrated the PROIV Aurora Framework and dashboard. This product not only allows you to deploy your application in a customizable browser-based desktop, but to also deploy your applications in a mashup environment, and enables you to pull information and data feeds from multiple sources.
Q: What was the greatest or most exciting thing that happened to your company or product in 2010?
As a business, NorthgateArinso increased its commitment to the US through its acquisition of the HR BPO division of Convergys. While not directly related to MultiValue, the acquisition shows the intent of NorthgateArinso to increase its market presence and provides a bigger backing to the Reality team. Through the increased footprint, NorthgateArinso can now offer additional HR and Payroll services to MultiValue customers. Using the PROIV Aurora development framework, MultiValue applications can now reside alongside HR solutions in the same browser based desktops. NorthgateArinso continues its commitment to the PICK community by attending User Groups and sponsorship of the 2010 International Spectrum show.
Q: What would you like Spectrum readers to watch for in 2011?
PICK Applications running on the web via the PROIV Aurora Development Framework, Cloud computing, Software as a Service (SaaS) and continued growth of its customer base are just to name a few. Watch for Reality version 15 which will include feedback from our ever growing customer base, market demands and future thinking.
Pavuk
Q: What new features or services did you introduce in 2010?
In 2010, we introduced major new features. The highlights being support for Linux servers and a completely rewritten Javascript front-end using the ExtJS library. The user interface is cleaner, much faster and has a broader range of browser support. Our services expanded to include a free "sandbox" account where prospective customers can practice developing applications and running them before making a purchasing decision. Online, personalized training has also been expanded.
Q: What was the greatest or most exciting thing that happened to your company or product in 2010?
While the product features and our expansion of services are exciting, what is really exciting is the interest coming from outside of the MV community. A number demos have been given and discussions underway with firms that want to have projects done in timeframes that no other technology can meet.
Q: What would you like Spectrum readers to watch for in 2011?
International markets are important, and we are working on full Unicode support in addition to other localization measures for 2011. Latin-extended and Cyrillic alphabets should be supported by year's end. We continue to expand the Pavuk Elements with more international currency support as well as Geographic Information Systems elements to continue to broaden the types of applications that can be built inside of PavukIDF. We will also begin web-based training series.
Rasmussen Software
Rasmussen Software spent 2010, its 31st year in business, finishing up a major release of its Print Wizard product. Version 4 adds PDF manipulation, multitouch, document viewing, and easy repositioning of text on form images to an already powerful product. MV users are increasingly employing Print Wizard to improve the appearance of their printouts, and even eliminating them entirely by emailing PDFs of invoices to customers. Others are retiring their dot matrix printers, and now using laser printers and plain paper for multipart form sets.
Revelation
Q: What new features or services did you introduce in 2010?
In July 2010 Revelation Software released OpenInsight Development Suite 9.2 which provides the following new components:
OpenInsight for Web (O4W) — A web 2.0 development toolkit that empowers OpenInsight developers to rapidly create browser based forms, reports, menus, dashboards and programs.
SQL Connector — With this new connector, SQL tables are now seen as native tables to all components of OpenInsight including forms, reports, popups, stored procedures and O4W.
OpenInsight for D3 — This connector will allow OpenInsight to be a front end application development tool with the D3 database from TigerLogic Corporation.
Single Sign-On (SSO) — By configuring SSO, OpenInsight users can be authenticated via traditional OpenInsight methods, via Windows security, or via a combination of both.
Bitmap Indexes — This type of index is used where the number of indexed values are relatively small; e.g. Sex (M/F), Active (Yes/No), etc. Bitmap Indexes are extremely fast, and are much faster than our existing Btree indexes.
OECGI3 — This is the OpenEngine Common Gateway Interface version 3 which supports Failover and Load Balancing modes. These modes make OECGI3 a more robust connection object and allows for extra capacity and/or redundancy to be added to a web application.
Q: What was the greatest or most exciting thing that happened to your company or product in 2010?
Without question it was the release of OpenInsight for Web (O4W) as part of the OpenInsight Development Suite and the quick adoption of this toolset by our developers and user base. In fact the product was so well received that several of our beta testers deployed O4W applications prior to our official release.
Q: What would you like Spectrum readers to watch for in 2011?
Ongoing development is always the norm at Revelation Software, and 2011 will once again be a very busy year. Our next major release of OpenInsight will include Data Encryption at Rest as part of our database offering. We are also looking at database development tools for social media environments and we will cap off the year with our User's Conference in October 2011 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
SJ+
Q: What new features or services did you introduce in 2010?
PRC provides change control, first and foremost. It does this according to guidelines and frameworks that come from various industries and regulatory agencies — and it does it with the same agility and common sense to which you and your users have become accustomed in the U2/MultiValue world. Each year the guidance changes and PRC always evolves with it. The technology of accessing and changing our software and our databases changes each year, too. In 2010 PRC was adapted to more outside tools and editors including XAML with .NET through SB/XA, the Basic Developer Toolkit and other web-based and rich-client user interfaces.
Q: What was the greatest or most exciting thing that happened to your company or product in 2010?
It is always exciting to keep PRC up to date with the latest initiatives in IT Governance and all the fun new tools that people are using to develop software and maintain their database! This year we updated our look — the web site is new and takes advantage of newer web technology to stay abreast of happenings in the industry. The newsletter became a blog, and we have expanded our presence in social media via twitter and some Linked-In groups.
Q: What would you like Spectrum readers to watch for in 2011?
PRC will continue to focus on the U2/MultiValue development environment —but will become more and more agile in adapting to various up-and-coming interface methods and development tools.
Synergetic Data Systems, Inc
Q: What new features or services did you introduce in 2010?
SDSI released a major new version of the UnForm Document Management Solution — v8.0. This release offers major enhancements to the base UnForm document production and document delivery component with a complete redesign of the document archiving and management browser retrieval interface. Also the image manager/ scanning component was upgraded to support full text OCR recognition in addition to zone OCR and barcode recognition.
Q: What was the greatest or most exciting thing that happened to your company or product in 2010?
The release of the UnForm v8.0 Document Management Solution with hundreds of new features and strategic new technology to process Application Formatted Output. This technology drives UnForm from applications that don't output raw text print streams and can enhance, archive and deliver documents from new source application types. In addition a key new technology that provides the ability to create custom Workflow business processes in the document management component was added.
Q: What would you like Spectrum readers to watch for in 2011?
Watch for the release of the new UnForm Application Integration tool that gives users the ability to create "click to view links" on their existing application screens to retrieve archive documents directly from the application window. Also, the release of a new .NET version of the Image Manager/ Scanning tool that will provide the ability to interface other commercially available scanning products with UnForm is expected in 2011.
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