I’m not sure I understand what you mean or the image you use. Measure is pretty much always based on things seen, or observed via the measuring mechanism. I don’t see how it is cold outside, but if I look at the thermometer, or go outside myself I can see or feel the temperature. No one can measure the unseen (how long are the roots of the tree, …).
Do you mean Lui’s is the tip of the iceberg and there are 20 other hires we don’t see, or do you mean he is the first and more will come later?
There is not much communication on that end of things. Maybe that’s where my worry / apprehensions come from. Claris is not communicating what internal changes they will set in motion for the plan to come to fruition. That’s why one hire is not going to move my needle (we each have different requirements on that). I can only make assumptions based on past behaviors (Bento, GO, WD, …). We know what they are aiming at, without knowing what they aim with (something that makes a big difference when estimating if the target is within reach). Factor in that a lot of staff have been coming and going (all levels and departments) in the past 5 years and it makes things very hard to read.
You mentioned Lui’s hire, not Claris. Out of the 12-15 staffers Stamplay had, I believe they said they kept 3 or less. A lot of the questions people have are met with answers that are either ‘we don’t know’ or something like ‘this information cannot be disclosed yet’.
It is a bit like the Workplace Innovation Platform. If they did not get the expected ROI from trying to surf on citizenDevs, lowCode/NoCode, and the bunch of other buzzwords they were playing catch-up with over the previous years, they will find it takes a lot more investment to build a category from scratch. When is it another player will be trying to surf that wave? Salesforce? MS PowerApps? Google App Maker?
Claris wants to do better in the Enterprise segment of the market. Go to G2 site and toggle the ‘Company Size’ radio button and you get a different grid Claris is not likely to showcase in their message:
has IMHO nothing to do with a test-robot that walks through customer processes to make sure that anything is still ok (or at leas 80%, all critical stuff included)
During the certification run 3 years ago, we had to specify testing procedures, what was checked in the recent cert’s
Certification really is a risk… depends on auditors - but that’s another story
For me, once I applied by BS-Filter to the marketing hyperbole, I came out with the following pretty great plus-points:
Android Support - no timeframe, which is frustrating, but it’s a seismic shift from the brick wall “No Way” we’ve always been told in the past.
FMDataMigration tool (or some derivative thereof) to allow copying schema changes between files.
Card support in Web Direct
Webhooks support (although it wasn’t clear to me whether this would rely on Claris Connect or whether it’s something that the FM Server Data API will be extended to support).
Yes, there was a lot of cringe-worthy marketring hype, but beneath that I think the above are pretty exciting, the only 2 questions for me remain:
I’d add the Javascript support as a big plus too… As far as I can tell it will mean we will able to run javascript in Web Viewer and instead of passing data back to FileMaker via the fmp:// URL (for example, a chunk of base64 encoded image data), instead will be able to pass that data directly to a FileMaker script, as well as have FileMaker scripts directly trigger javascript functions in the WebViewer…? I’m not on ETS (yet) so haven’t been able to test this… However, being able to pass larger amounts of data directly to a FileMaker script will get round the issue of the fmp:// URL parameters having a character length limitation (particularly on Windows)… My current workaround for this is to do a sort of AJAX POST to a php script that inserts the data into a hosted FileMaker File using the Data API, so will be nice to be able to take that dance off the table
Oh yeah - totally forgot that - that’ll be a winner. I thought it was kinda funny that one of the questions was essentially “are you giving us javascript functionality in the web viewer so you don’t have to fix all the other shortcomings in the filemaker platform?”
Was I wrong or did they say that people are already testing v19? I’ve been on ETS for the past few releases, and haven’t heard anything about it yet…
From Brad’s Email this morning:
“Second, at the next release, you will see our on-premise pricing change as well. The new pricing will be simpler which will make it easier for you to buy. You’ll hear more from us in advance.”
… any guesses on whether “simpler” means “more expensive”
hmmm, yup, when they announced the new ‘simpler’ pricing for Cloud v2 it meant a big price hike and is a fixed ‘per user’ cost of $39/month rather than the ‘per user’ cost decreasing as more users are added… I wonder how Site Licensing will be effected… Also doesn’t allow for ‘anonymous’ users etc…, though in the roadmap webinar they do suggest the new licensing model will include provision for temporary and anonymous users, so we’ll see…
I wonder what will be the workaround for the finally removed Runtimes in FMP 19?!
Seems like my time as a FM Developer will soon come to an end while my business model is mainly based on Runtimes. Selling FMP + a solution doesn’t come any close to selling a solution where everything is wrapped into one. That is not a no-headache software solution you can install via drag n’ drop, that is a complicated process no user understands and wants to deal with. (User: “Why does your software say “FileMaker Pro” in the Main Menu?”)
As I pointed out in the other forum before (long before it became unusable) Claris missed the opportunity to become the No. 1 Developer Tool for creating Apps. Apps are making tons of money with a multitude of users all of which Claris could participate. Instead Claris rather focusses on milking fewer users by raising their license fees. Good luck Claris, but I’m out!
The Runtime App resources haven’t get any new FM-Functions since its deprecation with FM14. New FM Functions can easily be substituted with the MBS PlugIn. The only one who can kill my FM16 Runtime in the future is Apple Inc. with a technical restriction with a new macOS that would abort any attempt to boot my Runtime.
Maybe we should push @MonkeybreadSoftware into Draco coding to build a FM “Thin Client”
I guess it’s similar to a Non-Disclosure-Agreement - NDA.
Good point, but obsolete at the moment when the presentation was made public by Claris on YouTube.
And «Claris Cloud» is US only, may expand to Japan and Singapur (she did not mention Europe!).
But the focus of Claris is Cloud, cloud, cloud. On prem will be supported? How long? My clients do not want their data in the cloud!
Louis
With FMP 18 as the last Version to support Runtimes this will give us a stopping distance (German: “Bremsweg”) of maybe 2-4 years (hopefully more) until the last Runtime will fail to work on the newest macOS.
Maybe we should persuade Christian to develop his own database solution, based on mySQL. With his skills this would approx. take 2-3 days to finish.
btw.
what is on-prem? According to wikipedia, its a synonym for SaaS - what is not what I want… I would like to buy a license, use that for a specific time, the upgrade or buy at the full price again
We are not able to install every yearly upgrade - if that goes to quarterly upgrades… omg.
