Over the last months I met hundreds of customers. It is somewhat humbling to learn about the many powerful applications built with D6, D7, Delphi 2005/2006/2007, XE2/3 and newer RAD Studio versions. Especially astounding is the number of great applications that are still maintained and evolved with D7 or 2007 technology. One of the great things about these is that they keep working and working, so why modernize and invest now? Tech is changing faster than ever before, so unless your app looks and feels modern, unless your app architecture is flexible – it can be obsolete faster than you think. Also, Windows 10 is changing a lot of things – eventually some of these old versions may not run so well and we recently informed selected customers that may be impacted.
Of course, we all benefit from your modernization! We can invest more and you have even better applications…
You may be surprised how much of the new trends, such as micro-services, REST APIs, Cloud Hosting are supported with RAD Studio 10.1.2. Our new Webinar series and exciting education initiatives will keep us not only on par with the competition, but leapfrog them in many areas. Our support for IoT, for example, is pretty cool.
I push the Product Team by constantly asking what is new and interesting that gets customers excited, and they gave me a nice bullet list that I thought to share…
- Windows 10 is a BIG Deal! Microsoft is reinventing itself and Windows 10 adoption is the highest ever (400M devices as of September). We support all the latest features of Windows operating systems (from complete Unicode support to newer capabilities, such as push notifications). UX is more critical than ever before and Windows 10 brings amazing modern look and feel; you get better performing native apps with 64-bit support; 10.1.2 enables Windows App Store Deployment even before Visual Studio! Not only will your apps be better looking and have more options with the latest VCL, but they will be much more stable and “future-proofed”.
- You need to be mobile! Many consider mobile as a nice to have, but there are few better ways to demonstrate the value of your tool than to create a nice looking mobile app (and do it fast). FMX is production ready with lots of improvements in the latest versions and continues to evolve as the best native framework available. You can be a winner and you can start small with app tethering or build an awesome full scale app. You should just check-out some of our recent Cool Apps for great examples.
- You can improve app connectivity to the latest major databases with the powerful new FireDAC data access framework. This increases your flexibility making easier future infrastructure or vendors changes.
- You can use your code to enable new web clients and capabilities by updating your application architecture with DataSnap and RAD Server. Don’t get left behind with other teams speaking about N-Tier architectures – you can have modern middle-tier application servers or REST-based microservices with RAD Studio today. You can also build modern REST-based thin Windows clients using the new REST VCL Client support.
- You will also greatly enhance your development productivity with huge increases in IDE functionality. Whether it is through code editor enhancements or improvements to the form designer, you can develop faster than ever with the latest RAD Studio IDE.
- You get the power of the latest Delphi language features such as anonymous methods, parameterized types (generics), and more. They are more powerful and more useful than you expect!
- C++ leverages the latest C++ libraries and language features while taking advantage of the power of RAD through the VCL — an unprecedented combination. There is no other framework for GUI development that is more efficient – we compare very well against Qt and FMX makes cross-platform development with C++ much easier.
- If you care about IoT (and you should) RAD Studio allows you to build applications that work with all the latest gadgets, devices, and sensors. We hold IoT awards for most innovative products!
- LINUX support, planned for 10.2 will get you further savings and another platform!
- And YES, new migration tools get you to the future faster.
We can sell Delphi and even C++ Builder better. We tend to be too shy about what we bring to the table. The analysts have not been especially kind, as they look for the next new thing. I think that what we bring is incredibly relevant to the market. Fast and efficient development does not get old and we do it better than anyone else.
Our team put together a really nice summary of Embarcadero for developers, “We Are Embarcadero” that I encourage you to download and share!