Transcript Four J’s Development Tools Return to Simplicity

Return to Simplicity
Business Applications
High Tech without High Cost
Agenda
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Company Overview
Business Problem
Four J’s Solution
Business Benefits
Product Strategy & Vision
Conclusion
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Company Overview
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90 employees
Privately held
• No banks, VCs, or external debt
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Global presence
• European HQ in Paris
• North American HQ in Dallas
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Management team
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Jean George Schwartz, President & CEO
Bryn Jenkins, COO
Stephen Sykes, SVP & GM Americas
Herve Hellebronth, VP Marketing & Communication
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Sequential, Profitable Growth
Founded in 1995 with $1million
seed money from founders
3,000,000 Users
5,000 Developers
1,000 VARs
$10m Revenue
1995
1996
1997
1998
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2000
2001
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Select Customers and Partners
End Users
Retail
VARs
Manufacturing
Municipal
Retail
CRM
Peace Software
Financial
Media
FDS
Finance
Supply Chain
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and
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Strategic Worldwide Reseller Relationship
• Four J’s provides
• Upgrade for Informix 4GL
• Rapid development and deployment of new business
applications against Informix and DB2 databases
• IBM provides
• Sales, Marketing, Support, Training and Consulting
• We Cooperate
• On joint marketing and selling
• On development of training, documentation, and services
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Agenda
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Company Overview
Business Problem
Four J’s Solution
Business Benefits
Product Strategy & Vision
Conclusion
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Business Applications …
Are Not About Technology
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Businesses use applications for two
primary reasons
• To lower the cost of operations (and services)
• To enable operations (and services)
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Business Applications must be measured
on ROI
• Investment: What is the total lifecycle cost?
• Return: How effectively does the software
• Improve operational efficiency?
• Improve market share and revenue?
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Legacy Bound
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Today’s business application using state-of-the-art
technology is tomorrow’s legacy application
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Version 1 – started with dumb terminals
Version 2 – rewrote for Windows
Version 2.5 – rewrote for HTML
Version 3+ – rewrite for Java, e-commerce, m-commerce…
ROI comes from business
functionality, not infrastructure
100%
ROI
Application
0%
Infrastructure
Business Logic
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Focused on Tech: Expensive & Risky!
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Constant investment in technology
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People, software, development
Slows your time to market
Distracts you from doing things that add value
Is expensive!
Detracts from focus on business value –
constantly dealing with
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Application Portability
Application Performance
Application Complexity
Application Programmer Availability
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Business Applications …
Are about Business Features
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You’re Noble Systems, the provider of call center software to
AOL, Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, etc.
Your key corporate goal is to own the outsourced
telemarketing firms that target retail companies.
You want to enable these centers to offer low cost, rapid
integration with their customer’s retail inventory and
ordering systems.
This will make you the clear market leader – but two of your
strategic targets are making 5 year vendor commitments
within the next six months.
How quickly can you develop this capability,
and how much will it cost?
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Agenda
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Company Overview
Business Problem
Four J’s Solution
Business Benefits
Product Strategy & Vision
Conclusion
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Intelligent Business
Application Infrastructure
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Abstract interface – single source code stream automatically
supports multiple client platforms
• Intelligent creation of interfaces on Windows, HTML, Java, X11,
PDA/mobile, ASCII
• No investment, development, or lock-in to client-side technologies
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Single source code stream supports multiple databases
• Open Database Interface supports DB2, Informix, Oracle, SQL Server…
• Multiple, simultaneous, native, high-performance access
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Thin client, three-tier architecture
• Automatic management and optimization of client/server communications
• High performance server – without special client-server skills
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Web Services support without special infrastructure skills
Keeping development effort focused on business logic, not
infrastructure or deployment issues
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Insulating Business Logic from
Technology Infrastructure
ASCII
Windows
X11
Java
HTML
HTML
WML
Web
Services
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Agenda
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Company Overview
Business Problem
Four J’s Solution
Business Benefits
Product Strategy & Vision
Conclusion
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Business Benefits
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Cost Reduction & Time to Market
• Enable the rapid development, deployment,
and evolution of Business Applications
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Cost Reduction & Time to Market
“Infocell is pushing the envelope in terms of
wireless applications. Four J's dramatically
improved our time-to-market, giving us the
competitive edge we enjoy today.”
“We could never have brought such a far-reaching
solution to market this quickly using other
development environments.”
Michael O'Connor
Technical Director, Infocell
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Business Benefits
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Cost Reduction & Time to Market
• Enable the rapid development, deployment,
and evolution of Business Applications
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High Tech without High Cost
• Enable full exploitation of state-of-the-art
infrastructure, without investment in special
skills or development
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High Tech without High Cost
“We’re able to offer a sophisticated Java application,
utilizing highly visual third party applets to extend our
functionality, without heavy investment in Java skills
or development.”
“We compete based on our rich feature set, high tech
look and feel, and absolute flexibility – we license our
source code to customers and provide SLA support for
their modifications. Four J’s has enabled us to deliver
on all three of these goals – without compromise.”
Eddie Hillard
President and CEO
Financial Database Services
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Business Benefits
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Cost Reduction & Time to Market
• Enable the rapid development, deployment,
and evolution of Business Applications
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High Tech without High Cost
• Enable full exploitation of state-of-the-art
infrastructure, without investment in special
skills or development
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Future Proof – not Legacy Bound!
• Insulate the investment in business
applications from waves of technology
innovation
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Future Proof – not Legacy Bound!
“Four J’s allows us to seamlessly track and leverage
evolving technologies, without investment in expensive
staff or development projects, or compromising our
application’s reliability or complex and powerful
business logic.”
Jim Noble
President and CEO
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Agenda
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Company Overview
Business Problem
Four J’s Solution
Business Benefits
Product Strategy & Vision
Conclusion
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Intelligent Business Application
Infrastructure -- Open to Change
Four J’s
Closed
I4GL
Informix
Windows
1998
I4GL + BDL
Informix, DB2,
Oracle, Sybase,
SQL Server
Windows,
HTML, X11
2000
Open
I4GL + BDL
Informix, DB2,
Oracle, Sybase,
SQL Server
Windows,
HTML, X11,
Java, WML
Web Services
2002
I4GL + BDL + OOP
Informix, DB2,
Oracle, Sybase,
SQL Server
Windows,
HTML, Java,
X11, WML, XML
Web Services,
App Servers
2003
*BDL – Four J’s Business Development Language
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Intelligent Business Application Infrastructure
Strategy for Market Adoption
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Huge captive Informix 4GL target market
• High direct value proposition
• Establish beachhead in 4J’s and Informix 4GL
install base
• Evangelize within to grow usage
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Branch to new development everywhere
Promote de facto industry standard
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Intelligent Business
Application Infrastructure
“Four J’s mission is to provide an intelligent
infrastructure for business applications that excels in
its openness, flexibility and performance, taking full
advantage of new technologies while preserving
business functionality.”
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Contacts
Four J’s Americas
Tony Lacy-Thompson
408-398-6284
[email protected]
Horizon Communications
Philippe Wagner
408-969-4888 x108
[email protected]
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Return to Simplicity
Business Applications
High Tech without High Cost
Appendix
Industry Perspective
Focused on Tech: Expensive & Risky!
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Application Portability
"Developers for Vignette have to rewrite its code to work
with application servers made by BEA, IBM and Sun.
They write to the core application server, then we go
back and write the specific code for each specific
application server."
Santi Pierini
VP of Product Strategy, Vignette
(c|net – "Java Jigsaw", NEWS.COM Special Report, March 25, 2002)
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Focused on Tech: Expensive & Risky!
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Application Complexity
"Finally, the complexity of Java itself continues to be a
problem. Complaints have particularly surrounded a key
piece of the Java standard, Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB)."
"The original intention behind EJBs was to save
programmers time. But many say they’re finding
headaches instead. Compounding the problem is that
EJBs, as part of the popular J2EE specification, are often
used as the basis for Java products."
(c|net – "Java Jigsaw", NEWS.COM Special Report, March 25, 2002)
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Focused on Tech: Expensive & Risky!
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Application Programmer Availability
"You’ve got a whole mass of developers out there who
are not hard-core technical guys, but are mainstream
business application developers in medium to large
companies."
John Magee
Senior Director, Oracle 9i Marketing
(c|net – "Java Jigsaw", NEWS.COM Special Report, March 25, 2002)
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