Wrap up: Progress App Dev Challenge

Last week, we had the pleasure of announcing the winners of the Progress App Dev Challenge at the closing session of Progress Exchange 2013. As part of the judging team, it was such a treat to surprise the winners who were genuinely excited and pleased that their apps built on the OpenEdge mobile app builder were recognized. I thought it was important to recap all the winners and judges for those who were not able to join us live at Progress Exchange.

A big thanks to our judges from Progress and our external judging for all their work during rounds one and two of our judging process. Thanks to Mike Fechner of Consultingwerk and Paul Guggenheim of Paul Guggenheim & Associates as well as Ankur Goyal and Shelley Chase both of Progress for their time in judging.

With over 40 people registering their intent to participate -- judging was tough, the team deliberated and narrowed it down to the following five:

Fifth Place was Bijal Patel of Distribution One for his DistOne Mobile CRM app. This app was designed for customers whose salesmen are constantly on the road needing to access current customer information.

Fourth place was Terry Bochaton of VPD for the VPD Search App. The VPD Search app was created for customers to see current and featured items as well as search inventory or DVD/Blu-ray and games, check availability and view an order status.

In third place was Brian Preece of Business Computer Projects for his FastShop app. FastShop allows customers to scan items in their own shopping baskets in the store and avoid checkout lines using their own mobile devices.

Sophy Schiller of Apero Solutions took second place for the app Latitude GO SalesXpress. The Latitude SalesXpress Mobile Application is the first offering in a series of Latitude “GO” mobile applications. With this app, sales people are able to take current up-to-date stock and pricing information directly to customers and to place real time orders on the “GO.”

Our winner was John Goodland from Advanced Business Solutions for the app, Open-Mobile Expenses, a new expense claim management app which enables users to record and submit expense claims via their smartphones or tablets. The app is fully integrated with the company’s financial management application, OpenAccounts, and will be launched at the company’s annual customer conference in London on 16October. John took home his weight in mobile devices to help future mobile app development. To learn more, read the newest release from Advanced Business Solutions here.

Congratulations to everyone! I’m so happy to see such support and excitement for mobile apps. All in all, I’d say it was a very exciting contest to work on and judge – apps ranged from a mobile expense reporting system, to sales and CRM apps, to a barcode scanning shopping app, and even a search app for movies. This just shows that OpenEdge is made for mobile -- you really can create, develop and deploy any mobile app! I can’t wait to see what others develop in the future.