Planning for a great 2016!
As the holidays approach, it is a good time to reflect and plan for 2016. Although IDERA acquired Embarcadero only two months ago, we’ve made a lot of progress. We met hundreds of customers across the world – from Brazil, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, UK, US, and more. We are delighted that thousands of developers use our solutions and many have been customers for decades. Our vision is simple: Focus Embarcadero on application development tools and continue to invest in great products to drive profitable growth.
Early indications confirm the developer community embraces our product vision – focusing on quality, ease of use, and scalability. Despite the anxiety that naturally comes with change, one MVP summarized by saying, “the proof is in the pudding, and your priorities are in the right place.”
In addition to our quality, ease of use, and scalability goals, we expect to simplify product installation and modify release cycles to ease the complexity of absorbing the current two major annual releases. We will emphasize our robust enterprise capabilities, building on InterBase and Enterprise Mobility Services (EMS), and extend our support for deployment platforms. We plan to modernize our go-to-market strategy and extend the developer community with more resources and ideas. Let me speak a little about each of these goals:
1) Improving quality, ease of use and scalability. This is a core philosophy for both Idera and Embarcadero. Our September release, Seattle 10, was very successful. It delivers higher quality and stability, especially when it comes to large projects. The C++ product received particular attention with the addition of C++11 language support for Windows 32-bit. Future releases will continue this focus on quality and scalability, enhanced by IDERA’s deep test automation expertise.
2) Simplify product installation and modify release cycles. One consistent customer theme is that two big releases are too many for current development cycles and upgrades. The download process and speed are quite long (I personally experienced that a few times). On the positive side the download size also reflects our extensive product features. We will address both downloads and upgrade strategy in the first half of 2016. We want all customers to embrace the latest available version of our products and be on a maintenance upgrade program that provides you with significant value. This strategy aligns well with Microsoft’s Windows 10 evolution plans and your needs for rapid cross-platform support.
3) Emphasize our robust Enterprise capabilities. Perhaps we’ve under leveraged our strength as an “Enterprise Strong” application development solution. With the proliferation of smart phones and devices, our unique capabilities to support high-level security and incredible speed to market differentiate Embarcadero’s solutions from other developer solutions. Our newest 10 Seattle Enterprise Edition includes many innovative features, such as embedded beacon support. InterBase, our embedded SQL database solution, is an underappreciated gem, recently winning a prestigious 17th Annual Total Telecom World Communication Awards (WCA) IoT “Most Innovative Use of Data” award. The recently announced new EMS pricing increases the attractiveness of EMS deployment and will strengthen our position in several industries, including Healthcare, Manufacturing, Retail, and Financial Services.
4) Modernize our go-to-market and extend the developer community. It is great to have passionate customers. It is also a great responsibility that we take very seriously. Support for mobility and IoT provide new opportunities for our customers. We will capture this momentum and become more visible with a modern brand that is dedicated to developers. We expect to improve our education programs to cover even more markets and expand our robust developer community. We have established global success on which to build. For example, in South Africa, thousands of students learn with our tools because of an education standard adopted by the education ministry. Just yesterday, I discussed with our Chinese partners a massive new education opportunity. This is a truly exciting way to grow the community!
There are other initiatives we will evaluate, but delivering on main product objectives for 2016 is critical. We will communicate the updated Product Roadmap in January.
We are fortunate to have a great team working hard to serve Embarcadero and our customers with passion and dedication. As 2015 ends, we thank our many customers for their continued support. There are a few more days in the year and we encourage you to explore our new promotions and attend some of the remaining educational events such as the next round of Developer Skill Sprints.
I wish you all a successful completion of 2015 and a prosperous 2016!
Best Wishes!
Atanas Popov
General Manager, Embarcadero
