Currency

1
Currency
Its Not Just About Money

• Mark Tyndall
• President CEO
• Foresight Software

2
Introduction

• Who We Are
• History
• Size

3
Introduction

• What We Do
• Software Products
• Customers Market
• Product Versions

4
Whats the Problem?

• Customers on old versions
• 20 years of coding
• TTY vs. GUI
• Versions, Releases, Patches, Fixes, etc.
• High number of support calls
• Rev-lock issues
• Support Expertise
• Expensive!

5
Currency

• 4. The state of being current up-to-dateness
• 3. General acceptance or use prevalence
• 2. Transmission from person to person as a medium
  of exchange
• 1. Money in any form when in actual use as a
  medium of exchange

6
The Solution?

• Get everybody current, obviously
• But how to
• Deliver
• quickly
• consistently
• Apply
• Seamlessly
• Safely
• Perform
• convincingly

7
Business Drivers - Customers

• Latest enhancements
• Features functions
• Stability
• SECURITY!
• Fewer issues
• Feedback cycle time
• Reduced downtime

8
Business Drivers - Vendors

• Reduced support costs
• What version are you running?
• Smaller, more intense knowledge base
• Improved customer retention
• Resolution cycle time
• Keeping up with the competition
• Sales tool

9
Elements

• Preparation
• Development and Testing
• Creation and Packaging
• Delivery
• Publishing and Notification
• Reception
• Detection and Acquisition
• Installation
• Location and Application

10
Preparation

• Development and Testing You Know Best
• Creation and Packaging
• Components
• Schema
• Data
• Code
• Collect and Secure

11
Release Builder Walkthrough
12
Delivery - Publishing

• Encapsulate
• Compress
• Protect
• Post
• Server Location
• Password Protect?

13
Delivery Notification

• Reactive
• Check your voice mail
• Proactive
• Get paged

14
Delivery Notification

• Reactive
• Client asks about updates
• User driven
• Less intrusive
• Proactive
• Server broadcasts to known (registered) clients
• Vendor driven
• Widest distribution

15
Reception - Detection

• Check for Update walkthrough
• Do I Need This One?
• Internal versioning
• The magic of the SEARCH statement

IF SEARCH(http//...
16
Reception - Acquisition

• Acquisition
• Method of pull
• More cool Progress stuff
• Native Windows program access

RUN ShellExecuteA IN hpAPI (0,
"open", vWhatPatch, "", "", 1,
OUTPUT hMyInstance).
17
Installation - Location

• Location
• Its rude to insist
• but its fine to strongly suggest
• (you do, however, have to deal with the
  exceptions)

18
Installation - Application

• Types
• New, Upgrade, Patch
• Elements
• Structure, Data, Programs, Compilation
• Parameters
• Executables, support files, initiation
• Keeping track

19
Installer Walkthrough

• Not QUITE as complex as it looks

20
Review

• Problem your customers arent taking advantage
  of your work
• Solution
• Present your updates in a way that is
• Easy to detect
• Easy to install
• Easy to depend upon
• Elements of the Solution
• Preparation
• Delivery
• Reception
• Installation

21
One More Critical Element

• Listen for (and respond to) feedback
• One of our most tested capabilities is that of
  backing out the latest patch
• While the customer may not always be right, he is
  always the one with the currency

22
Questions?