MultiValue Industry End-of-Year Recap 2018

Recap is our annual tradition. We look back at the end of each year and see how the landscape has changed. Normally, a tradition is about doing and seeing and saying the same things. But if the years have taught me anything, "the same things" are never what we find.

Entrinsik

What new features or services did Entrinsik introduce in 2018?

Informer's Jobs feature has expanded beyond its capability to refresh and deliver data to now function as a business process workflow tool where you can schedule a myriad of actions to be performed on your data that would previously have been handled manually. For example, creating a subset of data and emailing it to a secure group of people.

Many new export options are available for static files along with the ability to create embedded interactive links to content within Informer all in a highly secure environment using tokens.

Many additional extension points add more actions within Informer to deliver endless functionality.

Enhanced visualization includes multi-trend charts and aggregates for deeper analysis; pivot views with recursive drill-down on any piece of the visual; upgraded Highcharts enhance visuals; improved map visuals enable a view-data option on drill-down; trend charts support multiple series enabling comparison across datasets; column, bar, line, spline, area, and area spline charts can be used to show multiple aggregates in the same chart; and more visuals, for example donut chart.

More robust security and administration enhancements include an impersonate user feature, LDAP and AD domains, single sign-on (SSO), dataset and querying benchmarking to gauge the health of the system, and scheduling a system clean.

What was the greatest or most exciting thing that happened to your company or product in 2018?

Informer 5's embedding capability is growing to provide seamless, invisible software integration with third party applications. One extremely exciting opportunity for Entrinsik's ISV (Independent Software Vendor) partners is the ability to use Informer tag libraries (vue.js, react, angular) and inline Informer content in their own applications and in their platform for a truly seamless integration. This provides a tremendous value add for Entrinsik's ISV partners by enabling them to extend the functionality of their existing software by putting data analytics front-and-center within the software environment their customers use frequently. Examples include CRM, ERP, Supply Chain Management, etc.

What would you like Spectrum readers to watch for in 2019?

Informer 5's templated output will enable customers to create custom outputs of their data. For example, after users conduct data analysis to focus on information of interest, they can export the data in a wide variety of formats including invoice, statement, executive report, etc.

Customers will be able to customize the look and feel of Informer 5 to have the application reflect the organization's branding that they incorporate within their other applications and systems.

Wizards or mini-apps will guide users, present reference information and demonstrate various ways to use APIs and tags that provide functionality within Informer.

There will be more report types, visual types, and connector types that continue to expand Informer 5's usability and functionality.

More hooks to third party software applications like Salesforce.com will be made available to extend their functionality to take advantage of Informer 5's advanced business intelligence and visualization reporting capabilities through seamless integration

EXEControl Global Solutions

What new features or services did EXEControl Global Solutions introduce in 2018?

EXEControl Global Solutions has partnered with third party vendors to enhance the overall system experience for the EXEControl Community. These added partnerships include:

• Bluestone Telecom - More aggressive bi-directional phone to ERP application integration
• Cisco - Two form authentication protection - Duo Security - added access layer to ERP application
• IBM - MDM (Mobile Device Management) - Mass 360 - for enhanced control of IoT devices used by the organization and by the ERP application

What was the greatest or most exciting thing that happened to your company or product in 2018?

EXEControl Global Solutions has expanded our reach by opening our third office location in Fort Wayne, Indiana. We also added another employee to our Charlotte, North Carolina location. At corporate, in Clifton Park, New York, we hired two new people to meet the demand for our services.

What would you like Spectrum readers to watch for in 2019?

Every seven years, software companies need to undergo a modernization process for their applications. EXEControl Global Solutions will be starting an effort to identify the latest in technology and user-interface trends to identify and start the process of our 2020 modernization effort.

OnGroup

What new features or services did OnGroup introduce in 2018?

• Some of the major new ONgroup software features:
• Uses the CLR as the run machine
• Netbuilder is an application generator that emulates SB+
• VS extension IDE for MultiValue Basic
• Support for MongoDB
• Support use of JavaScript, TypeScript and Python running in the same process as MVON
• Transpile MultiValue Basic to C#
• Support and integration with .NET
• Virtual data definitions manifest by SQL Server

What was the greatest or most exciting thing that happened to your company product in 2018?

Held a class to train on use of MVON# and Netbuilder at Precision Solutions (Kevin King) in Longmont CO. 17 attendees. General agreement that MVON will change the MV world.

What would you like Spectrum readers to watch for in 2019?

Several companies Worldwide will complete the migration of their applications to MVON# this year. We and our distributors and end-users will have lots to show and tell at Spectrum this year.

Rocket

What new features or services did your company introduce in 2018?

No one has time to wait for long, slow technology development cycles. And many organizations lack the resources to hire large development teams to build the tools they need to stay competitive. The Rocket MV Application Development Platform is a power tool that gives developers the ability to get their ideas from the drawing board to the real world. Users can build new apps quickly and update them in a matter of minutes—not hours (or days).

In 2018, the Rocket MultiValue team reached out to young developers as we continued to focus on the future. We're running the second annual Rocket APT Challenge where university students from around the globe will compete for cash prizes and internships by building an application based on the Rocket MultiValue application platform. Winners will be announced in the spring of 2019.

We also launched a new initiative: MV GenNext. We hosted a group of young MultiValue developers who came together to discuss and collaborate on innovative MultiValue techniques and to talk with product management and engineers about what they wanted to see in the product roadmap. With the help of GenNext, Rocket will be able to push the boundaries of innovation and cultivate younger developers.

What was the greatest or most exciting thing that happened to your company or product in 2018?

Rocket MV is the right choice for organizations in industries that demand critical performance, including emergency systems, healthcare, financial services, banking, retail, and ecommerce. Rocket MV combines a development environment with an embedded database that continuously supports your business with little ongoing investment.

Rocket introduced a new product, Rocket Connection Manager, to help our customers and partners simplify modern application development through ease of deployment, monitoring and security. We also ran a beta program for Rocket UniVerse 12.1.1. Improvements to UniVerse mean that critical applications can now handle extra loads during peak hours and seasonal spikes through intelligent, accelerated transaction performance and query processing for increased throughput with high volume transaction levels. For example, online orders for banking transactions will result in increased revenue and customer satisfaction, and greater efficiency with internal applications. This leads to greater confidence in business decisions based on improved data integrity, reliability, and accessibility. The new Recoverable File System (RFS) ensures data is accurate and up-to-date. It keeps users from losing transactions, reduces the risk of file corruption, and expedites restoration if necessary.

What would you like Spectrum readers to watch for in 2019?

Rocket MV users don't want problems, and they don't want excuses. They just want to get their products into production as quickly, efficiently, and inexpensively as possible. That's why we collaborate with our customers during the design and development process so that product roadmaps align with real business needs to deliver:

• Solutions that build customer loyalty and retention
• The ability to bypass roadblocks to deployment
• Tools that evolve with users' changing needs

2019 promises to be packed with more information on Rocket MultiValue. We're going to talk with, listen to, and educate our customers and partners with regional events and blog posts on the Rocket MultiValue blog. We are committed to providing valuable MultiValue-related content weekly, and we invite everyone to visit the site and sign up for email notifications when new posts are published. We want to add your voice to the blog, too!

We're planning the 2019 Rocket MultiValue Business Forum series now, and we and plan to be in Australia, the UK and the US. Read about the 2018 Series - which was attended by several hundred MultiValue leaders - and let us know what you'd like to hear about in 2019 and where you'd like us to host a Forum. In 2019 we are also planning meetups around the world. If you're a customer or a partner, consider starting a meetup near you. They're a great way to share information.

SJ+

What new features or services did SJ+ SYSTEMS ASSOCIATES introduce in 2018?

Every year the Department of ITT (that's IT Torture) comes up with new requirements in reporting and auditing. PRC has more logging and reporting this year (and every year!)

What was the greatest or most exciting thing that happened to your company or product in 2018?

PRC is running in a full dot-net/SQL environment via MVON#. PRC not only tracks development in that Multivalue-like environment, it will also deliver software changes to and from it, performing repeated conversions transparently.

What would you like Spectrum readers to watch for in 2019?

More PRC users on more diverse platforms.

Zumasys

What new features or services did Zumasys, Inc introduce in 2018?

AccuTerm 7.3 added a dictionary-driven report writer, session resilience and a maintenance program with free upgrades to upcoming AccuTerm 8. jBASE 5.7 added an object language to appeal to younger developers & Dynamic Files that provide 2-3X performance increase. Free Power BI integration through MvConnect generated a lot of interest.

What was the greatest or most exciting thing that happened to your company or product in 2018?

After 18 years, we sold our cloud/infrastructure business to focus exclusively on our MultiValue software products AccuTerm, jBASE, MvConnect and OpenQM. We added Josh Camacho, the former CEO of Opto, and several Pick developers to keep up with the growing demand for programming services.

What would you like Spectrum readers to watch for in 2019?

Zumasys is breathing new life into MultiValue by investing and educating new developers on the Pick data model. While other vendors are reducing their head count, we're growing and acquiring additional products to add to our portfolio. Expect more innovation, no price increases on our databases and more exciting products like AccuTerm 8, our much anticipated HTML5 browser-based version.

Featured:

Nov/Dec 2018