Re: Cat among the pigeons......

From: mamcx (thismail_at_noexist.com)
Date: 07/16/04 

Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 16:29:56 -0500

> Right now, this is the soft underbelly that Borland would do well to
> really target. Your question is an excellent one, and one I've been
> thinking hard on for a while now, as my company would benefit mightily
> from being able to "attack" this market.

You know how attack if know what need/expect the market.

I work in this "market" from years now. Is easy know some facts (I live
in Medellín/Colombia... DISCLAIMER My facts must be see "as-is" ;), and
are MY facts so...)

- More or less, a company is
Small shops: 1-3 developers (hardly 4), 1-8 support team (because have a
lot of bugs, of course!), 0 QA (hard...hard this), 0 Serious Managment
(normaly, the manager is a developer that work in the DOS version or in
ancient languages but now is the CEO), Low budget (of course), +/-
100-2000 deploys (i work in/for sucesfully small shops ;) ), pirate
software/working always on beta dev tools common - In a place, working
from 2 years on "Beta" VS.NET ..... that is, are reluctant to pay for a
MS tool but not to much with some thirdy-party tools like report
engines/charting/grids etc...

More used languages here: Visual FoxPro, VB 4-6, ASP.

The Guy: Do anything. More or less work for others, is a kind of
consultant. I'm one of this from years and now strat a small shop...

Pain factors:

-Mainly, close to zero QA.

-Big problems with deployment (EVERYONE company i know in my city,
included top 6, have serious deployment problems because MS "solutions"
like IE, COM, DCOM, etc..)

-Close to Null awarenes of tools like Control source(like CVS), Bug
database, Uml (apart useless diagrams). Anything from start to deploy is
a manual process

- Hard to realize N-tier, server agnostic development (i.e. is easy to
see the valuable, hard to code it)

The sucesfully smal shops regret the use, like a plague, the anything
with a extra cost for the customers. Always code the tools (mainly) or
buy royality-free products.

In this market, VFP have sucess because have everything a small shop
need in the package. This reason alone is the fact because MS not can
dump so easily this tool (more easy MS dump old VB6 ;) )

A dev tool for this market MUST have this (Apart of the obvious, IDE,
Code Editor, etc..):

- A very good report tool. (like the included in Delphi is more than a
lot of people have know).
- Sql engine. If can be embebed, great (Interbase/Firebird fit this
requeriment easily)
- DB connectivity to Ms Acces&Sql Server. Other DB are very rare
- Nice graphics. We compete with this ;) (ie: toolbars, glypsh. D8 have
this requeriment)

This is something that not MS not Borland not appreciate enough, IMHO. I
dream a deal of delphi + DevExpress or TMS on this. The developers and
managers and customers complain about how un-nice are the GUI on FoxPro/VB.

Good marketing, IMHO: A Delphi application with the new toolset icons of
Delphi 8. Plus some DevExpress/TMS controls.

- Easy deployment. Delphi 7 and below have this (Copy& run MUST have
most publicity, IMHO) .NET right now is not a option. (Please no waste
my time say me the opposite)
- Chart Tool (+1 for Delphi)

The kind of applications are very DB centric. But this things are common
requeriments:

- Do backups (to floppy/cd); Read barcode; Control a POS machine; Send
mail; Convert data to XML,HTML,PDF, Excel; Support of Excel&Word.

- The traslation of the environment. Spanish people like spanish
programs. Developers too... That is a barrier for some people.

I think that the PRO edition of Delphi have almost anything a small shop
need, with some minimal addons.

A very integrated bug database & Dunit & UMl NOT FOR DESING but for SEE
the flow/actual code in a visual way and is close to a killer.

Now, the price is not more than 1000 US...

My dream toolset , for the point of view of a small shop (so, i don't
think in Borland do anything, see this like how is the expectation, and
then think in how adrees it ;) :

- Delphi Pro
- ECO in Pro ;) (Ok, a lot of people maybe not need this, but is my
dream, ok?)
- Uml for see my clases. Uml for see what call what
- Interbase/Firebird
- Connectivity to MS Acces/Sql Server
- Intraweb (for webapplications)
- ASP.NET (for the rest)
- DevExpress and TMS Components.
- Remobjects
- JVCL
- Integrated DUNIT

This can cover all of my requeriments, imho.

ANTI-MARKETING:

- Tell how the product work for ANY USA/Europe corporation. We see ANY
USA/Europe corporation like something TOO big, unpractical, too costly,
etc.. (In fact, MS now in the colombian web page promote only succes of
Colombian companys. For Borland can work in any country of
latinamerica/america central) We know for FACT that solutions for BIG
are a waste of time&money in pymes.
- Too much buzzword (SOAP, UML, etc...)
- Talk about big teams. A lot of steps on development (We heard this
story from years but a small shop EVER, NEVER, can apply procces of the
size of rational).
- Show ANY applications made for BIG companys.
- How can connect to Java, CORBA, Mainframes, Oracle (too costly) is not
the way.
- Anything with royality included
- Anything that look a dependence to others things. For example, the MS
Analisys tools-Sql Server.

GOOD MARKETING

- Tell how the product is easy to mantain, deploy, change
- Show a application tipicall in the market, like a ERP
- SHOW THAT NOT NEED BUY anything apart the tool, BECAUSE have the most
important things inside (and provide a overview of the tools... HINT:
The report engine, the chart, the Db tool for Interbase/Firebird)
- Show how is easy for a team of 1-3
- Show how connect to Excel, Word
- Show how integrate to other applications (ie: Excel & Word ;) )
- Build a web page.
- Show the product hapily run in Win98-Win2003 with minimal effort
- Show how have cheap QA with DUnit and Bug database
- Easy N-tier

In short, show how the tool help in produce the solutions for the
customers of the small shops (Pymes, ERp system, Small analisys, web
sites) rather than tecnicall buzz or for big things. Simply that.

> Everyday, small companies take the step towards doing in-house
> development. Somewhere out there, a business owner is making the
> decision to move from off-the-shelf solutions to custom solutions.
> There's a lot of money to be made figuring out a way to find these
> folks and get their attention.

Sure. We, the "small" shops provide a lot in solutions & products, at
least in latin-america. We can pay if see the benefits (and knwo about
it!). But mainly, if you are a "small" shop need fell protected.

Borland have the 70-80% of the solution, talking about product. But is
absolute necesary more comunication, more support.

Relevant Pages

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    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)
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    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)
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  • Re: DeXtrous Delphi with DavidI
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    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)