Keeping an eye on the enemy

Many Progress Application Partners are not exactly what you would call fans of Microsoft. Progress APs have been working with the Progress 4GL and Progress OpenEdge platform for decades and have had great success building business software for vertical markets. Microsoft has always seemed to be the "big dog" or the unwelcome giant in related areas. Until recently, the Microsoft Windows platform has been a bane to Progress APs rather than a viable platform. This is often the topic of conversation between members at the Application Partner Business Council.

Regardless of your technical-religious beliefs, it is important to recognize that the Microsoft Windows desktop and application that run natively on it account for more than 90% of the business market. That doesn't mean you should seek to be just like them, but it does mean that your application needs to compete with these applications and the way they look.

To that end, you should keep a close eye on what Microsoft is doing and, more importantly, what modern Microsoft-based applications look like because that is what your customers will expect your application to look like. Or better.

I find it extremely valuable to subscribe to and scan through Microsoft-centric development industry magazines. Ones like Redmond Developer give me three things in each issue:

• Some inside, albeit biased, information about what the latest and next generation of Microsoft tools and platforms will do and be named
• Plenty of advertisements for develop tool and user interface add ons, the ones that Microsoft developers will be using to steal away my prospects with good looks before they realize there's not much under the hood
• A "horror story" column each issue that transcends Microsoft and reminds all of us there are situations to avoid in the software development world

So, make yourself more competitive and more capable of succeeding in your next sales call: read a few Microsoft industry magazines, understand what they are up to, recognize the kind of look-and-feel your customers expect from you, and be prepared to speak to it or guide your development in ways that keep customers from buying just based on looks alone.

And if you're ready to sell your soul in exchange for satisfying your Microsoft-crazed customers, you can have a look at the Allegro website or the Virginia Progress Users Group website where you'll find the recent PUG presentation on how Progress OpenEdge 10.2 includes the Advanced GUI which allows regular Progress 4GL (or Progress ABL, whatever you want to call it) to create modern Microsoft Windows interfaces. No more "wow, that looks as good as Windows 3.1" remarks.