@lecates, great to have you here. Thanks for providing your insights.
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Thanks for the post @lecates - happy to hear a positive voice from Claris. Sounds like the strategy has changed from the Cloud-first, NG centric Devcon keynote that was given last year that scared so many of us. Will be interesting to see if FM continues to get the engineering resources it deserves.
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@lecates, great to have you here. Thanks for providing your insights.
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Thank you @lecates, I welcome your input here at the Soup.
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@lecates : Many thanks for your "insider" and sincere advocacy.
For my point of vue i can tell that most of historic customer i know have became unhappy citizen.
To change their mind they donât need traditional and/or overabundant marketing messages but ACTIONS that go in THEIR direction in term of quality, perfs, price, flexibility, features (in that order) etc.
About your last paragraph, i can tell we are all here because community was destroyed years ago. When it existed, it was already difficult to DISCUSS with FMI, but now i do not believe it is even possible. As FBA though, i saw Claris started the discussion recently. Last months i was very busy and could not invest time on it. But yes, i think there is a little chance there and i promess i will give it a try soon.
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Hi @lecates
Welcome to the soup and thank you for chiming in.
Adding a cloud offering to the existing on-prem technology certainly makes sense. Nobody is questioning that. Just that cloud does not fit every need and business requirements (i.e. regulations).
The IT community at large is observing that vendors try to move every customer to their cloud offerings, employing salami tactics. Having all customers in the cloud would make the vendor's business easier but poses a problem to numerous customers for various reasons.
So getting the clear-cut written statement you delivered is much needed in order to know Claris' intentions regarding the future availability of on-premise/cloud offerings. Marketing-heavy oral presentations stored on YouTube are not enough.
Regarding development of FM and other Claris products and where development is heading to, a blog called 'whats baking?' or 'what's cooking?' , giving an outlook, would be helpful. You could also give an insight on certain activities like regression testing.
It is well understood that such communications are not binding feature announcements but a way to keep the community in the loop.
Recent updates have been accompanied by detailed release notes. This is much appreciated.
Like most, if not all of us, I visit the Claris community, too. Unfortunately it still suffers from many shortcomings in terms of usability. The community has been vocal about it and has named all the hurt points.
Communication with FMI, now Claris, was and is somewhat special. Quite often, the need for discussion was met with silence and that left a mark.
It is a challenging time for all of us and moving to a new location that better suits the needs of the Claris team perfectly makes sense. So good luck with that!
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Claris' Keynote this year really focused on Cloud-Smart instead of Cloud-First. Srini specifically talked about this change. It so much better fits the message they were trying to convey the first time. Kudos to the entire team for recognizing the need to alter the words used to better fit the vision.
@lecates - thank you. Thank you for your passion. Thank you for your advocacy of the platform, and the things that make it special. Thank you for your advocacy of us as developers. You truly are a champion of the FileMaker platform, and of Claris International.
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Thank You so much for chiming in here @lecates!
When it comes to the 'community'...
as one who visited the 'community' daily before it turned into 'salesforge', I'm just there very seldom today. It is maybe a blog - but no longer a forum. Finding is hard (too hard for me), reading more than the first page becomes almost impossible
As a second 'road-work' (not road-map), the 'pricing' pages at claris are -at least here and for me- extremly not clear. Most of the people who are visiting that page are missleaded and feel helpless
(What should people think if they always 'fall' into 'renting' and 'clouding'? What if people need just one server (they already got 2 or 3 licenses) or a server with 2 or 3 clients - what about those 'tiny companies'?)
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Iâve been watching this thread with interest and, having no insider knowledge, had nothing to add. However, like many here, thank you to @lecates for voicing much of what I was feeling but without any supporting knowledge.
We have investigated alternatives to FileMaker, primarily down to licensing and the change of the FileMaker Inc to Claris culture, despite some of us here having our FileMaker roots back to sometime after 1986. However, with changes that Claris have made, assistance from the UK Claris team, the roadmap for agile development, which I have been vocal about for the last few years, and the cloud smart approach has resulted in us renewing our AVLA licenses for the next 5-years and will do so for our SBA licenses next year.
We now believe that FileMaker has never had a better chance to break out of a niche market. Having investigated some no code/low code alternatives, we are now being bombarded by their marketing material, most of which could be written for FileMaker. It looks as if the world is finally catching up and, at the moment, most of these alternative platforms are targeting the enterprise market with corresponding costs. FileMaker can achieve and mostly exceed much of what these new players are marketing, and despite many complaints about licensing costs, at a fraction of the price. A word of caution, once enterprise penetration becomes saturated, then these players will be looking at the SME market, as it always happens. Hopefully, FileMaker will be so far ahead of them, theyâll have control over this.
I appreciate that many âold schoolâ developers have had trouble coming to terms with the new Claris, it has taken a while for us to adjust as well. However, we are FBA partners and value that, but equally we do not want a supplier to dictate how we run or market our company. We wish to be allowed to take whatever steps we can to push forward, building on a solid and affordable platform and, as a result, simply increase our profitability, thereby also the market share of FileMaker. Previous decisions by FileMaker Inc have actually restricted our ability to grow their platform, possibly due to a dose of âweâll tell you what to doâ inherited from their parent company.
Left to our own devices, but advocating Claris whenever possible, we will not remain old school, despite our age. Neither will we spend our future time developing. We will bring more youngsters onboard who are a lot smarter than we are, while the old hands will push the company forward into new markets whilst keeping a steady hand on the tiller.
Referring back to our AVLA and planned SBA 5-year renewals, this will be an investment of about ÂŁ50k ($66k) from a small family run business, which is a huge vote of confidence in the direction FileMaker is progressing.
Go Claris!
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we are partners as well, I joined the FileMaker platform in 1990, started developing with FileMaker 2
One of the problems here is that we have no more contacts in our language. Also license agreements are really hard to understand for us - Thanks so much to the team of the 'FileMaker Magazin' from Hamburg, they are the only help we get today
While thechnically, FileMaker is superbe - licenses are somewhat hard to explain (to our customers). We investigated also quite some time into other platforms and in our team, we got some knowledge now. But the speed of developing, the time we need to get a 'solution' (application mock-up) for a customer to show how it could be - thats impossible to achive with these other platforms (I investigated).
Our business is 'custom applications' - so, we fall in between everything...
Connect...
After spending hours into 'dig into API', there IS a need for something like Connect - but (as of today) non of the examples fit our needs - our API's are from small app's, our world is too small..
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...and we are not crazy!
Very well stated "marketing smart" message!
Here is my less well articulate (although I did mange to work in the word synergistically) riff on some of the same points that Andy @lecates makes above...
1:41:11 in...
DIGFM: Fun FileMaker Facts, featuring fundamental functionality (4/9/2020)
I wish I could make the image go away and leave just the link.
Go FileMaker! Go Claris!
Right on the target 
.
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From an âofficialâ Claris document...
MVL is an acronym for Minimum Viable Learning
Perhaps Magic Value List?
I believe NG is Cloud only.
This is also much more than messaging and whether to downplay onprem and FM itself. How else is there a pricing page that is so confusing and a trial that did itâs best to hide Server?
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The âpricingâ intro is indeed very pushy towards cloud.
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All,
I would like to also chime in on the post from Andrew LeCates (#40) from November 7, 2020. Like Andrew, I want to reinforce the message that Claris is not abandoning the FileMaker platform. FileMaker is a key strategic asset and the foundation upon which Claris is built. We continue, and will continue to invest in FileMaker to make if the best tool to allow developers of all levels to create and deploy their custom (bespoke) business apps.
Yes, we are also investing in other products such as Claris Connect, and âNGâ, these however are not a replacement for FileMaker, rather a compliment to FileMaker. If we use the analogy of a toolbox, we are adding more tools, that when used together allow our community of developers to build incredible business apps.
We are in the business of software and high tech, we all, including Claris, must become comfortable with change. We are all currently witnessing an exponential shift in the capabilities of software; from the rebranding of what used to be referred to as RAD, to No Code / Low Code, the advent of AI, ML, IoT, cloud, mobile, etc. If Claris intends to exist into the future, and we do, we will need to embrace these technologies as well. Not because they are cool âbuzz wordsâ, but because they enable you to continue to solve business problems that add incredible value to you and your customers.
Our fundamental aim has never changed in the 20+ years I have been at Claris/FileMaker. We build tools that allow smart people, those closest to their business, to build bespoke apps that not only allow them to encapsulate their unique business processes, but tools flexible enough to allow you to keep up with the pace your business evolves.
That is at the essence of Claris, of the FileMaker platform, and will remain our DNA as we move forward into the future.
I would also like to personally thank your for the passion and loyalty you have had for our platform over all of these years. We may provide the tools, but its is you who create incredible things with them. We are always so humbled and amazed to see what you do with our products. Frankly you sustain our enthusiasm.
Thank you
Rick Kalman
Director of Product Management for the FileMaker Platform
Claris International Inc.
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Thank you @rickkalman. That is probably the best description of Claris' vision that I've seen published. And thank you for your commitment to the platform and helping us build great custom apps.
Our fundamental aim has never changed in the 20+ years I have been at Claris/FileMaker. We build tools that allow smart people, those closest to their business, to build bespoke apps that not only allow them to encapsulate their unique business processes, but tools flexible enough to allow you to keep up with the pace your business evolves.
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I'm interested in knowing when is Linux out of developer preview based on your comments.
BTW, welcome!
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It is already out of preview. It was released last week, I think.
They have an under-the-hood webinar scheduled.
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Thank you for your comments. Especially nice to see Claris staff come to this forum.
We greatly miss the Roadmap videos to learn about progress you make on the various projects.
Between last conference and next is quite some time and a few releases.
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