We made a key part of our strategy for 2010 support for the OpenEdge community. We think we have a very compelling story with what we have delivered in OpenEdge 10.2B, and what we are working on in OpenEdge 11. Everything we are hearing supports that so we want to ensure that the story is getting out.
In that vein, we are providing strong support for the numerous PUG (Progress User Group) events that are being held around the world. In fact a couple of weeks ago I was in the London at the UK PUG event held in our corporate offices in Slough and in Lillehammer, Norway (O.K. It was actually Øyer) presenting to a combined Sweden/Norway Pug event.
Both events had 40-50 people, a nice collection of sessions covering a broad range of topics including several sessions by me. At both events I shared with the attendees the Progress vision for Operational Responsiveness, and introduced them to RPM (Responsive Process Management). I also reviewed with them the key features in OpenEdge 10.2B including Transparent Data Encryption, and introduced them to some of the key features in OpenEdge 11 including Multi-tenant Tables, Multi-tenant AppServer, and our thoughts around automated deployment to the cloud.
In Norway I also went into detail in terms of a number of best practices around building SaaS including multi-tenancy, UI flexibility, etc.
And there were lots of other great sessions as well. In the UK, British Airways gave a very comprehensive session on how they used Sonic and Actional to build out a robust SOA infrastructure. Gary Clink showed how to achieve Business Transaction Assurance within your IT infrastructure using Actional and the AutoEdge sample application. There were other great sessions on SaaS, OO, and BI as well.
In Norway, Jarmo Nieminen gave an introduction to OpenEdge Architect, OpenEdge Replication, and OpenEdge Management.
Two of Progress' technology partners, Mike Fechner and Robert Prediger showed how OpenEdge is open and flexible enough that you can really use it with whatever UI technology you want. Mike showed how the OpenEdge GUI for .NET is great for building compelling desktop UIs and showed some tools that simplify migrating from the OpenEdge GUI to the GUI for .NET.
Robert showed how you can build AJAX style UIs for your OpenEdge application and showed off his Backbase-enabled framework to help you get there.
And there were other sessions on the latest Progress corporate positioning, and on application and database tuning as well.
But the PUGs are not just about learning and technical content. They are about socializing and networking with your peers in the OpenEdge community. It's about building the relationships that will help you to be more effective down the road at doing your job. In the UK they had a very comfortable dinner on the evening before the event. And in Norway they did something that truly fit in with the culture and environment that we were in and is certainly fits in with what I like to do best. I think these videos speak for themselves.
So if you are not a member of your local PUG, please join. And if you are a member, plan to go to the next event. Offer to do a session that you think will help the other members. Not only will you learn something, and help others learn, but you will meet a lot of good people, and have a lot of fun.
Ken Wilner