Exchange Online Day 2 Recap

Wow, another great day at the Progress Exchange Online 2010 Conference.  A few technical glitches, but I guess that is to be expected when you are delivering all the content that we tried to deliver in such a short period of time.  Today was all about the Progress developer community, as well as how Progress partners are moving their applications into the cloud.

We heard from many members of the Progress community on the subject of developer best practices.   The sessions included: how to better operate and manage your OpenEdge applications; how to develop the right User Interface for end-users; and finally, some great tips about application modernization.

Our partners, including BravePoint, Future Proof Software, and Great Valley Technologies, highlighted how attendees could take advantage of the latest technologies to create applications with an updated look and feel to support the next generation of users.

We also heard more about how our customers and partners are thinking about and making the move to Cloud Computing. This included a great session from Progress’s own Rich Banville, who introduced us to the concept of multi-tenant tables, which is one of the newest features of the OpenEdge platform that everyone is excited about, especially those that are looking to move to a SaaS business model.

Joining me on stage was two of our more leading-edge SaaS application partners, Bluebird Auto Rental Systems and Wilke Thornton, who shred insights and experiences with the Progress community regarding cloud deployment, supporting multi-tenancy, along with just some of the fundamentals about running a SaaS business.

Tomorrow is the last day of the conference and I know it will be just as great as the first two, in terms of content (with hopefully some of the resolution and streaming issues addressed).  We will hear some more customer case studies, and learn more about deploying in the cloud. I know many folks are also eager to listen in on the sessions about future proofing applications through new technologies and modernization.

Again, if you have missed any of the conference, it will be available for the next 90 days On Demand, so it is not too late to participate in Exchange Online 2010.