It was very exciting to learn at Build this week that Microsoft will now be offering Visual Studio (VS) as a development tool to build anything to deploy anywhere—from Linux to Apple to Android, you name it! As Steve Ives referenced in his recent blog post, all of the Xamarin tools that we’ve been leveraging are now included with VS.

The really cool thing about all of this is that Microsoft’s direction is in perfect alignment with ours. At our Summit meeting at the end of last year—a gathering of Synergex customers who provide input on Synergex’s technology roadmap—we received overwhelmingly positive feedback on our proposal to include the ability to use traditional Synergy within Visual Studio.

More and more of our customers are adopting Synergy .NET while still maintaining and developing in traditional Synergy, leading them to work with two separate development IDEs: Workbench for traditional Synergy and VS for Synergy .NET. We are happy to say that this will all change with the release of Synergy/DE 10.3.3, pegged for OUR conference in May. The 10.3.3 release will allow developers to use VS for both traditional and Synergy .NET—the post-conference workshop is even dedicated to this topic! I’m even thinking that this new functionality might inspire even more developers to play/experiment with Synergy .NET once they are using VS as their single IDE.

Synergex has always been committed to helping companies leverage their existing investments to stay competitive and current. This latest announcement from Microsoft really echoes that sentiment. After this week, reaching for the stars is now easier than ever!

It’s been a while since I posted a blog, but the SPC always seems to propel me back into the blogosphere! SPC 2010 is unbelievably just around the corner, and we are once again gearing up for a conference that is not-to-be-missed.

A few years ago, a customer asked me to help him justify the conference to his team and upper management. I quickly jotted down the top reasons to attend the SPC and ended up sending the list to all of our customers. As the reasons haven’t changed much since then, I won’t bore you by repeating them all but think the main ones deserve a recap.

Here goes…

• Continuing education. Imagine going to your heart doctor for a check up and learning that he or she has not been to an industry-related conference for several years. How has he/she kept up with all of the advances in the technology? Reading journals and surfing the net? Wouldn’t you prefer he/she had a more well-rounded education including hands-on instruction, networking with peers, and one-on-ones with industry experts? Likewise with your software—make sure your “application doctors” are getting the best education possible.

• Break away from your day-to-day routine. One of our customers said about the SPC, “The SPC gives me a chance to escape the hustle and bustle of business and think strategically—I use it like a software development retreat.”  I have to agree. More often than not I solve problems or come up with new ideas when I’m away from the office on a business trip or seminar. And, your employees who attend will come back motivated and inspired by your confidence in sending them. I know this first-hand from the responses I get from my employees when I send them to conferences.

• Learn about the future of Synergy/DE. Version 9.5 will offer native support for Microsoft’s .NET Framework, enabling you to interoperate with applications written in other .NET languages, such as C# or VB .NET; to take advantage of all .NET Framework classes; and to develop Synergy code in Visual Studio. At the SPC, you will learn the ins and outs of the new technology, and get the opportunity to try it out for yourself with hands-on exercises. (Note: The focus isn’t on getting to .NET. The focus is on modernizing your application – and .NET just happens to be the best way to do it. I’ll be blogging more about this shortly!)

• Experience the latest functionality hands-on. It’s one thing to hear about all the new features we’ve added to our products over the years—it’s another to actually try them out with the knowledgeable PSG consultants standing by for questions. The popular Code Phantom is back, offering even bigger, better, and more enjoyable challenges to help you experience the latest functionality first-hand.

• You want to make sure you are fully taking advantage of Synergy/DE 9.3. Synergy/DE 9.3 delivers a number of important features that enable you to improve security, performance, and productivity. The SPC will cover these features in detail so you can be sure you are making the most of them in your own applications.

• Networking. SPC attendees often describe the networking opportunities as the most valuable aspect of the conference. Where else will you be among so many other Synergy/DE developers, who may be working on or may have completed projects just like those you are considering or may be struggling with? One of our customers who traveled from Europe told me he justified the entire conference just by one conversation he had with another customer at the welcome reception. The rest of the conference was just icing on the cake. And because this year’s conference is in Sacramento, the Synergex staff members who are developing and supporting your Synergy/DE products will be there to answer your questions.

• Your business depends on it. I could go through several analogies ranging from maintaining your health, home, investment portfolios, etc., but the bottom line is that your business depends on your Synergy/DE solutions. With that in mind, how could you not take advantage of this once-a-year opportunity to make sure you are taking advantage of all that is available to you—that you are working most efficiently, and that your products are as functional and powerful as the technology allows them to be?

You can find details about the conference at conference.synergex.com. I look forward to seeing you there.