We are excited and grateful to celebrate Synergex’s 40^th year in business.

We started by delivering applications to local businesses in the Sacramento area 40 years ago today. Shortly after opening our doors, founders Ken Lidster and Mike Morrissey got frustrated with having to rewrite perfectly good applications to take advantage of the latest DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) hardware and/or operating systems each time DEC came out with a new kit. This inspired them to create DBL (Data Business Language), which could take any version of DEC’s DIBOL language and simply recompile and relink to run on any DEC platform. This dramatically changed our—and ultimately our customers’—direction and put us on the map, as they say.

DBL was the first portable development language within DEC. In the ‘80s, Synergex (then named DISC) also became the first company to make it possible to migrate applications from a proprietary environment to the then emerging Unix/Xenix and MS-DOS systems. In the ‘90s, we enabled migration to Windows; at the turn of the century, to the web, APIs, and RDBMSs (SQL Server, Oracle, ODBC access, etc.); and in the teens, to .NET. Today we provide a migration path to mobile devices.

Forty years ago, very few of us, if any, could have imagined how today’s computing environment would look. Fewer still could have imagined that the applications they were developing would be able to run on all of these emerging platforms—but they can! Last week, I saw a DBL source code file dated 1976 run in .NET and on an Apple iPhone. Again, who could have imagined?!

Since our early shift to providing software development tools to application developers, our commitment to “portability” has never wavered. We have remained steadfast in our mission to deliver software tools and services to help our customers take advantage of current and relevant computing. Our products have been the ultimate “future proofing” to the significant investment customers have made in enterprise solutions.

And while many companies that were well known back in the day are no longer on the scene, we continue to grow and thrive more than ever—thanks in large part to our customers. Many of our ISV customers are the leaders in their respective vertical markets and continue to maintain their top positions and expand their install base. Some of our direct end users are household names with north of $100 billion in annual sales, who leverage  our tools to help them prosper. Without their support and partnership, I wouldn’t be writing this. So here’s a big shout out to all of our customers, with the biggest thanks there is.

Lastly, a company doesn’t grow and thrive without the dedication and hard work of its employees—both past and current. We have been—and continue to be—blessed to have very talented and driven people contribute to our success these past 40 years. Several, like myself, have been here for the lion’s share of our existence. But we also have many new employees who represent the future—and the next 40+ years of Synergex. Just as 40 years ago we couldn’t imagine what our industry would look like today, it’s impossible to envision what it will be like 40 years from now. Regardless, I feel very confident that Synergex will be here for our customers and their future generations, supporting whatever future computing environments come along.

With the 2014 Synergy DevPartner Conference right around the corner, I have been doing some reflecting on how our mission statement, “Advancing Applications. Partnering for Success,” applies to the conference. On the surface, a conference seems like a one-way conversation: the conference host presents information to attendees, who (hopefully) absorb it. However, over the past 28 years (!) of hosting the DevPartner Conference (formerly SPC), I have come to really appreciate the element of partnership involved in the DevPartner Conference—a partnership that transforms a few days of knowledge transfer into enduring business success.

So what does this collaboration look like? It starts with attendees feeling engaged and challenged throughout the three busy days of sessions and tutorials. Their enthusiasm about the tools we have to offer builds over the course of the week, inspiring them to pass the information they glean up the chain of command once they return to the office. The leadership team is receptive to the new ideas, which are incorporated into the company’s short and long-term strategic plans. From there, the information turns into action, and the ideas presented at the conference reappear in the form of a modernized and more powerful application based on proven functionality. Of course, this process could take months, or even years—but with the partnership in place, these goals CAN and WILL be achieved. We’ll do our part and give it our all during those three days of presentations and demos—but it is up to attendees and their managers to meet us halfway by ensuring that the lessons learned don’t get swallowed up in the daily grind, and that the investment in education leads to innovation and increased efficiency back at the office.

I was discussing this vision with a customer’s Senior Manager who is planning on sending a contingent of software developers to this year’s conference. She made my day when she described the system her company has adopted to maximize the value of the DevPartner Conference: after returning to the office, the team presents a condensed version of what they learned to the staff back at home. Studies have shown that explanation significantly facilitates learning, so this is a great way for attendees to reinforce the skills learned at the conference—while at the same time sharing the information with the rest of the team.

Whether or not you go with this model, you have a little over 6 weeks to prepare your own post-conference plan for success. Let us know how we can partner with you to make it happen!

See you in Birmingham or Chicago.

Cheers!

Although I’ve always considered myself to be an early adopter, I must admit I’ve been a bit skeptical about upgrading to Windows 8 for a number of reasons: its completely new look and feel, all the negative propaganda surrounding it, its missing “Start” button, our internal struggles with the new icon requirements, other people’s horror stories… just to name a few. This past weekend I was forced to face my fears head on when I offered to help my father purchase a laptop. We found ourselves at one of the big box stores, where I quickly realized that any laptop (or desktop, for that matter) we purchased would have Windows 8 installed (and I would have to pay a downgrade fee to get to my tried and true Windows 7).  When I expressed my doubts to the salesperson, he countered with surprising enthusiasm. He raved about Windows 8 and was so reassuring that I soon felt comfortable enough to make the leap, instead of going online to purchase a Windows 7 system.  It certainly got me thinking that I’ve been paying attention to only the negative stuff, and not the positive. Even more importantly—just like 64-bit systems—I know that our customers will soon be dealing with end-users just like me.

At home a few hours later with my dad’s new Windows 8 laptop, buyer’s remorse and the dreaded Windows 8 user experience was full on. Things that were so familiar and intuitive were gone. Armed with my trusty Windows 7 laptop and my BFF Google at my side, I slowly and painfully learned how to turn on Windows Defender, get the Windows Explorer 10 address bar to reappear, get to traditional Windows, etc., etc.

Unsure about how I would be able to support my dad on Windows 8 when I didn’t have a clue myself, I decided the next day that the sooner I upgraded my own system and got on with it, the sooner I would be able to help my dad—and hopefully our customers as well.

So my next step was to figure out what on my system was—and more importantly, was not—supported. I stumbled upon a great little tool, the Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant. You basically just run this tool to determine which programs on your computer are or are not compatible with Windows 8. I highly recommend it. When you run it, you’ll notice that Synergy/DE 10.1 is listed as compatible with Windows 8, which brings me to the real point of this post.

You probably have users/customers who will ultimately upgrade to Windows 8 (or the latest version of whatever platform you’re on), either because they drink the Kool-Aid or, frankly, because they have no other choice. You’ll have some who will be gung-ho about going to the latest version and oblivious of any reason not to. Others, like me, will be skeptical about upgrading, but it’s in their nature to go for it anyway. And you’ll have others who will just happen to buy a new system and will assume all of their software is supported. No matter what the reason, you’ll want to be prepared when your users ultimately upgrade, so make sure your applications can support these customers when they inevitably ask. First step: make sure to get your Synergy/DE version current by upgrading to version 10.1 right away. Then, do what I’m doing: vow to learn something new about your new version/platform every day. In other words, embrace the change!

Recently the technology director for one of our top customers forwarded to me a copy of a lengthy email he had sent to the employees at his company, just raving about the new features available in the latest version of Synergy/DE. Apparently his sales director had responded to the email with great enthusiasm, but requested a condensed version of the email that he could forward out to decision makers and prospects. So my contact, the development manager, asked me if I could repeat something I had said during one of the evening events at the DevPartner Conference in May—something about how to respond to a prospect who questions why your app is written in Synergy. He thought what I had said represented a condensed version of his email, and was something that his sales director would be able to use. At first, I tried to remember exactly what it was that I said (bear in mind, I probably had a pint of Guinness under my belt at the time) but then quickly decided that there was an easy answer to this question—Guinness or no Guinness.

So, I provided the response below.

If asked, “What would you say to a prospect who questions why your app is written in Synergy?”, I would say…

Application X [the customer’s application] is developed with Synergy DBL, which is one of the most advanced languages in existence today for developing enterprise business applications. While Synergy/DE is a modern OO development suite that rivals any popular tool set today, what separates it from the pack is its portability. When we first developed Application X 30 years ago, we could never have possibly imagined that our customers would need to run on Windows 10 years ago or that there would be a .NET environment as we know it today. Because we use Synergy/DE, which over the years has consistently added support for the platforms we’ve needed to get to, and which currently compiles and runs on OpenVMS, all flavors of UNIX, Linux, Windows, .NET, handheld devices, and the Cloud, we at Company X can focus on functionality. There is no question there will be new user platforms down the road, but because Application X is based on Synergy/DE, we will be in a position to leverage our current business logic without the need for rewrites, no matter what shape a new platform happens to take. For “future proofing” an application, there’s no better place to be.

Cheers!

OK, we were wrong… and many of you were right! Back before the turn of the century, we went through some re-branding efforts of our development tools—and renaming “Synergy DBL” to “Synergy Language” was one of the biggies. Ever since then, we’ve been trying to correct both customers and employees whenever they reference “DBL”. The primary reasons for making the change were 1) to move away from something associated with a “3GL,” and 2) to create a simpler, more descriptive name. The challenge here was twofold: first, going from “DBL” to “Language” really wasn’t that exciting in the first place. And, second, no matter what we changed the name to, you and our employees would always and forever call it DBL–because that’s the name that’s embedded in decades of code. DBL is the name of our compiler, after all, and the extension of our source files.  So, as our portable, advanced, object-oriented Synergy products have stood the test of time and have soared to even greater heights while other development tools have come and gone (4GLs, RAD-Rapid Application Development, etc.), we are now returning to, and embracing, the name that was there at the beginning—and always has been there—welcome back, Synergy DBL!

I’ve just been burned again by a third-party application that doesn’t integrate with Office 2010. To the bane of our IT department, I’m constantly upgrading to the latest and greatest version of everything—the latest being Office 2010. [Note to our ISVs:  I’m like that customer who makes you cringe when he/she calls… ;)] And while I really, really, really love Office 2010, it just doesn’t integrate well with the applications I use, almost negating all of its benefits. My first productivity loss came when my emails to customers weren’t automatically going into our CRM app.  I am not the only one who is just blown away that this major player in CRM does not support Office 2010—and is not expected to until later this year! Next came our VOIP telephone system, which, when integrated with Office 2007, practically eliminated the need for a telephone handset. Office 2010 has brought me back to the hand set, and I just learned it will be at least another 6 months before our phone system supports Office 2010!  So much for keeping current.  I was so excited to use a 64-bit program, but what’s the point if the apps I use don’t work with it?

Perhaps I am overly sensitive to this issue because it has always been so important to us to support new versions of third-party products before our customers need them. I recall several years ago when Roger Andrews, our Synergy/DE Architect, was urging us to prepare for native 64-bit support. I thought at the time that we were way too early in the game. But, as it turned out, we were just in time. We work diligently to keep up with current hardware and operating systems so our customers can plan and anticipate the needs of their users. The proliferation of 64-bit systems has actually caught many of our customers by surprise. While 64-bit systems have been out for several years, the O/S support hasn’t always been there. That’s not the case today. Today, customers (like me!) are expecting 64-bit hardware, 64-bit operating systems, and 64-bit applications. They view anything less as inferior. Many of our customers are now catching up. This brings me back to my Office 2010 dilemma. While I’m benefitting from the substantial application enhancements and incredible performance enhancements of a native 64-bit program, I am losing several productivity tools that don’t yet support Office 2010. Almost defeats the purpose of upgrading.

I’m sure that there have been cases where we have not been ahead of the game, but I’m appreciative of the effort we make to anticipate the requirements of our users, often before they even request them. My personal experience has really brought home the point that the best, shiniest product in the world doesn’t matter too much if the software you want to use doesn’t run on or with it. Lesson learned: keep your software up to date so your users don’t get burned like I did!

P.S. I still can’t believe Adobe has not released a 64-bit version of Flash on Windows — argghhhhh

I dropped my daughter off at her first day of high school this week and got caught up in a “get back to business/summer’s over” mentality–get to the office, sharpen my pencils, and focus on what’s really important.

First order of business: Blogging. It’s been weighing on my mind that I haven’t posted in a while, and as I mentioned previously, I’ve been anxious to talk about our new tagline, Advancing Applications. Partnering for Success.

Our tagline for years was “Take Part in Creating Success.” These five words were plastered on everything we sent out. The concept was to convey to our customers, employees, and vendors that we are only successful when our customers are successful. I polled some Synergex new-hires for candid comments, however, and learned that they found the tagline confusing – i.e., who was taking part in whose success? We slowly backed away from the mantra to the point that we got rid of it all together.

This troubled me. Taglines articulate a company’s vision and empower people – employees, customers, vendors – to make decisions in line with the company’s overall objectives. (Think FedEx when they were just an overnight service – Surely “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight” empowered their employees to make that happen, at whatever cost, without having to ask permission first.) So, we recruited some Mad Men types (in our case Mad Women) to help us find a way to convey the original message without the confusion. We white-boarded ideas around customers, products…everything. We finally chose “Advancing Applications. Partnering for Success.”

That’s it. Our application of the Law of the Little Shovel. Our existence is based on these simple words: “Advancing Applications” because that’s what we’ve been doing since the early days of helping customers migrate from one platform to another; to today’s customers who want to implement new Windows user interfaces and Web front ends, or integrate data with Oracle and SQL Server, hand held apps, and a lot more. And “partnering for success” because we recognize that we are partners with our customers.

Our role extends much farther than providing products and services to help customers advance applications. It means coming up with ideas and ways to help them succeed – from designing new logos for them, to sending out mailings to help them get new business, to training their support departments on new technology — simply, partnering with them however we can to ensure their continued success.

So, armed with my sharp pencils and little shovel, empowered by the vision present and clear, I am eager to help my partners advance their applications to ensure success. Please call on me to let me know how we can help you.

We just wrapped up the SPC in Boston and it went great. Customers seemed to really like the ChronoTrack demo app (and all that sample code to take home!) and the Code Phantom’s challenge was answered by nearly all of the attendees – in fact, many stayed late just to make sure they’d completed it. (We kept them energized with pizza and beer, of course.)  I received lots of positive comments from customers about the conference and Synergy/DE in general. One customer mentioned that he had written us off 10 years ago but is absolutely amazed at how far we have come and what can be done with Synergy/DE. Another customer at one of the lunches referenced how much he had learned about what is possible with Synergy/DE that he hadn’t known about because he’d been “heads-down” for so long with his current project. Overall, customers were really pleased about learning what they can do right now with their existing Synergy/DE-based applications to make them more powerful.

We were also joined by Bigbah and his team (Manny, Jodah, and Mark), who seemed to really enjoy the conference – at least according to their Facebook pages!

It was a really informative conference and a great time was had by all. We’re looking forward to seeing our friends “across the pond” in a couple of weeks.

Not surprisingly, the upcoming SPC (Success Partner Conference) has been prevalent in my recent conversations and customer visits.

Today I was speaking to a customer in the Midwest who told me the Boston SPC overlaps his company’s conference, so he’s trying to make it to the London SPC instead.  Another customer is paying out of his own pocket to get the conference because his company has limited travel this year.  And another customer is using his own money *and* vacation time to get to the conference for the very same reason.

It really struck me how much our customers value our conference—both for the benefits it provides to their companies, and to them professionally— and reassured me about all of the man-hours we have put into preparing all of the content for the conference.  Our Professional Services Group has been working since last June on this year’s sessions and demo application, making sure they cover all of the recent enhancements to the Synergy/DE product line.  When I hear the lengths customers go to be a part of this knowledge transfer, and I see the resulting impact on their applications and their businesses, I know our investment has paid off.

I’m looking forward to a great conference – see you in Boston or London!

OK, time to jump into the blog scene. It’s either that or start “tweeting”—and I’m just not there yet. I was asked to start a blog, so here goes…

The biggest hurdle I’ve faced re. starting a blog is Where To Start. There is so much to talk about! Most of the things I expect to blog about are recurring themes from conversations I have with customers—it will be great to document and share these. Other blogs will cover random topics that I feel would be of interest to you. So my first blog will be a hybrid of the two, with the subject being our upcoming SPC (Synergex Success Partner Conference). Some of you may remember that the original name of the SPC was DC for “Developer Conference.” Today, still, the conference primarily targets developers, but the overall theme is, as it always has been, “Partnering with our customers to help them succeed.” (On that note, stay tuned for a future blog about our new tagline: “Advancing Applications. Partnering for Success.”) While most of our customer contact is with the actual developers of Synergy/DE-based software, Synergy/DE products also impact those in an organization who are not developers. It is for that reason that we strive to partner with several different types of players in an organization to help the company overall make the best use of our products.

To that end, we have expanded our communications this year to target those different players specifically. Our Marketing team has developed four characters: Jodah Veloper, Mark Etting, Manny Jurr, and Bigbah Smann. Each character is an exaggerated representation of his role’s interests within an organization and how they may interact with those of another role’s. So far, we have had some good success with this expansion of communication and are having a lot of fun with the characters. (Look for them on Facebook!)

The message is that no matter what role you play in your organization, the SPC will benefit you – by providing a firsthand look at how easily you can advance your applications with today’s Synergy/DE; by helping you hone your development skills; and/or by showing you the new features your development team should be taking advantage of.

• Presidents, CEOs, VPs, General Managers—basically those who are responsible for your P/L (AKA Bigbah Smann): Your Synergy/DE-based application(s) are among your company’s most important assets. I recommend you attend at least the first day of the conference so you can get a firsthand view of all of the functionality that can be immediately attained to make your applications more powerful, and for ISVs, more marketable. I’m confident you’ll be very surprised. In fact, I’ll even comp the first day of the conference for any CEO/CIO/CTO/GM who accompanies a developer to the SPC.
• Those who are responsible for the sales and marketing of your Synergy/DE based applications (AKA Mark Etting): Like the person (above) who is responsible for the bottom line, you can gain significant benefits by attending the conference. It’s a great opportunity to see what your application is capable of, and what other Synergy/DE customers have done to make their applications more marketable.
• And of course the people responsible for the development of your applications (AKA Jodah Veloper and Manny Jurr): I recommend you attend all three days of the conference – this will enable you to take away the skills and knowledge required to quickly and easily advance your applications.

So, whatever role you play in your organization, I look forward to catching up with you at the conference, or meeting you if we have not yet had the opportunity.

OK, that first blog was relatively painless! I look forward to blogging again soon.

At the risk of dating myself, I recall several years ago seeing some of our customers (who were there when I started at Synergex) entering retirement and sailing off into the sunset. I got a bit nostalgic, as many of these people really took me under their wings and showed me the ropes when I first entered this field. At the same time, I was excited to begin new relationships with their successors — the Next Generation — who would be working with me as they carried on the legacy of their predecessors. What I didn’t consider then, but have since witnessed time and time again, is how important it is to prepare one’s business applications for the Next Generation. Passing the torch involves more than handing down a title and a business plan. It means getting all your ducks neatly in a row so the next person is sure to make the RIGHT decisions to best support and sustain the business.

The decision makers at our customer sites come in all shapes and sizes: some are executives, some are application users, and some are developers. For most of our existence, we have focused on the developer. After all, it is the developers we are most in contact with, and most, if not all, of our customers’ original owners and executives were developers. And we’ve been very successful at addressing their needs and providing them an exceptional array of development tools to get the job done. Our integrated Workbench, OO language, Java/.NET Integration, and SQL access to SQL Server, Oracle, and MySQL are meeting and exceeding their requirements. And many of the developer decision makers, including those in the Next Generation, have done some amazing things to advance their Synergy/DE-based applications to meet current look-and-feel demands while maximizing their very rich and proven business logic.

It is another group of Next Generation decision makers that can wreak major havoc on a business. It is the new executives who decide to replace everything because the existing application isn’t pretty enough. They expect a Windows or GUI-based system, and they are willing to pay for it. It doesn’t matter that the existing application is the most robust and appropriate solution to run their company, and that their employees are highly productive because they know the application inside and out. Nope, if it’s not <insert whatever they had at the last place or whatever they think is the latest thing>, it must go. Because some of these Next Generation decision makers don’t know about the history of the application, the years of customizations, the value of the rich and proven business logic, they decide to throw it out and start with some name-brand, high-end system that costs lots of money, requires new resources (and often makes the current ones obsolete), takes forever to implement and customize (and never achieves the functionality of the original application anyway), and in the end demolishes their business processes — just because the application looks good. We’ve seen companies fold after spending millions down this road. Don’t get me wrong, I like a good-looking application too. But functionality is king, followed by look and feel, not the other way around. Fortunately, with Synergy/DE you can have both.

So what do you do to avoid this fate? Simple. Get your application ready for the Next Generation. It’s much easier to add a new front end to proven business logic than the other way around. You wouldn’t consider tearing down your house if you didn’t like its curb appeal, would you? Get your application current, make it look modern, give it all the look and feel that new Next Generation executives might demand, before they have the chance to come in, take one look, and throw it (and all of your intellectual capital) out because the application doesn’t look like they think it should. Don’t get caught off-guard with an outdated application: Advance it to meet the needs of the Next Generation!