I recently ran a webinar, alongside Mary Kelly, discussing how InterBase ISV’s are innovating faster while improving profitability and return on investment through using InterBase. Following up on that webinar, I wanted to summarise some of the points discussed.
Table of Contents
Why ISV’s Choose InterBase?
To put it simply – Trust – ISV’s trust InterBase to lower their business risks, and cut out large costs that exist around data management and support, while kick starting their development with a stack of required core capabilities around data storage, data protection and user security.
Real Value of Ownership
Let me share what I mean with a quick story from my own first-hand experience. A number of years ago, I worked as a Director for an ISV when it purchased a .NET software house. The .NET product used MSSQL as the backend and supported a quarter of the businesses that the existing supported Delphi & InterBase application did. Even though it was hosted, the .NET product support overhead was over 5x the cost to run compared to InterBase after purchase, year on year.
The largest part of the cost came from having 2 full-time DBA’s, compared to minimal training that was required for those supporting InterBase. Additionally, InterBase was suitable for remote deployment and support on whatever type of computer the customer had. This helped improve the value proposition to the customer and lower the risks to landing business.
InterBase features and benefits that bring business value
A full list of the top reasons ISV’s / OEM partners choose InterBase discussed in the webinar include
- Highly Scalable
- From one machine to 100’s of connections on a dedicated server, it grows with you easily!
- Small memory & on-disk footprint
- Regardless of the device InterBase just runs! – from a mobile to a laptop to a top-end Server, InterBase is lean!
- Affordable
- OEM / VAR program offers great options for ISV’s with bespoke pricing based on your usage.
- Simple Deployment
- Next > Next > Finished! You don’t need a training course to get InterBase server running, making it ideal for remote, low-cost deployment
- Fast & Simple
- Out the box, InterBase has an element of self-tuning included. But is also highly configurable.
- Reliable
- Near zero admin and automatic crash recovery make it ideal for embedding into remote deployments. Even if the plug gets pulled out the server, InterBase pops back up and goes!
- Embedded User Security
- It’s easy to overlook the value you get (especially when combined with Encryption) to control access around the database. The full roll based user security makes it simple to implement.
- Change Views
- Data change tracking with the IoT Award-winning database.
- The patented change tracking method is designed to enable 1000’s of connected devices to track changes, even when disconnected without any overhead on the central database! – No change-logs, table triggers or anything else that bloat the database and become hard to manage over time!
- Rich Disaster Recovery
- A great mix of database features for backup, restore, dumping etc, and enhanced even further with a unique use of Table Spaces.
- Cross Platform Support
- Server, Desktop AND mobile spanning Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS, and Android.
- Strong “Enterprise Grade” Encryption
- 256bit AES strength on-disk encryption at rest that is transparent to the client, with column level encryption options with multiple encryption keys – InterBase is used by everything from Financial and POS systems to Medical software globally to deal with financial, personal, and medical data, enabling customers to reach a wide range of industry data management and security standards.
- Tight RAD Integration
- It’s easy to develop with InterBase, with it used widely by RAD Studio customers,
- Its open API also supports direct backup from software, making regular admin tasks very simple.
- It’s also widely used by considerable .Net applications and offers .Net, ODBC, and JDBC drivers.
The ISV Business Model
Further to the above, the webinar also spends time looking into the key business of a typical ISV, and the other value InterBase makes possible for them.
A big part of the InterBase customer stories shared on the Embarcadero website, include time and again, customers talking about the evolution of InterBase, and even when they have been slower to upgrade their development environment, how InterBase has enabled them to release new features. This open innovation approach enables ISV’s to gain a real innovation boost to their product with major releases of InterBase, complementing their own R&D.
A good example of this was the addition of transparent on-disk encryption a number of years ago. This server-side feature, enabled with a simple parameter update in the client-side, provided rich functionality and data storage compliance with nearly zero R&D spend! More recently, Table Spaces has enabled customers to speed up their server for larger deployments by targeting which part of the database goes on which drive.
Anyway, I hope you find the webinar an interesting watch, and it would be great to hear about your InterBase stories!
If you are interested in becoming an InterBase ISV. Then please contact the Embarcadero sales team, or me directly.
The post How ISV’s Drive Innovation with InterBase appeared first on Stephen Ball’s Technical Blog.