Marcos, I need to write in english, sorry, but I understand the
exchanges between you and Joseba.

My company, Nebula Research and Development, is a worldwide
Distributor for mv.NET. Our clients include VARs and end-users who
are adopting mv.NET for many purposes. Since you are in Gijón, Spain,
I welcome you to work with Joseba. We have a new business
relationship which will allow us to work together to provide quality
support for our spanish speaking developers in Europe, South America,
and elsewhere.

Fusionware no longer sells or supports mv.NET.

It sounds like you have already downloaded mv.NET for evaluation, but
if you have not, I can provide download information from our website,
and Joseba and I can guide you through your evaluation process.
Please email for details: mv.net@ removethisNebula-RnD.com

The number of licenses required depends on how you write your
application - the same is true for almost all of these connectivity
products. PDP.NET and mv.NET both include session pooling so that you
consume less DBMS licenses than actual users. One of our mv.NET
end-user sites over Universe has between 100 and 200 end-users doing
daily time entry with only 8 mv.NET licenses. A more "persistent"
application will require more licenses.

It's important to consider that new sites using these pooling
technologies need less DBMS licenses. That brings down the net cost
of a new installation for the end-user and makes it easier to sell
applications - or one can say they may get more use from the same
number of DBMS licenses with no additional cost. In the above case
I'm not saying the site only needs 8 licenses where they used to need
100. They still use the other licenses for telnet and other purposes,
but the didn't need to add DBMS licenses for a new application module.
Existing sites get less financial benefit related to their existing
DBMS licenses because we can't sell paid DBMS licenses back to the
vendor. An existing site can, however, decrease the number of
licenses for which it is paying yearly support - and at a ratio of 5:1
or 10:1 (users per DBMS license) the savings of support fees alone may
pay for the cost of connectivity licenses. These facts are all
helpful for companies evaluating whether to buy, sell, or develop
using these connectivity products.

The List Price for PDP.NET and mv.NET is roughly about the same but
Raining Data does not offer VAR discounts for PDP.NET. VARs pay full
price and get no commissions on sales. I can't speak for other
reseller channels, but I offer VARs and some end-users working through
Nebula R&D base discounts, quantity discounts, and other incentives,
which makes the cost for mv.NET much less than for most equivalent
PDP.NET configurations.

Regarding a comparison of PDP.NET and mv.NET:

- I have used PDP.NET and have said in this forum that I thought it
was great software. That was before I started using mv.NET and
decided that I preferred mv.NET.

- The current version of PDP.NET is not supported on your D3NT 7.2,
you will need to upgrade D3. mv.NET works for most MV platforms and
we never need to ask which release of DBMS a site is running on.
PDP.NET works just for D3 and U2. This is very important for
developers and end-users who are wondering about the management
direction of Raining Data. If you switch from D3 for business reasons
you will probably also want to switch PDP.NET. If you are using
mv.NET you can port your code to any platform with no
communications-related code changes.

- I do not believe PDP.NET has a future. I do believe BlueFinity is
firmly dedicated to mv.NET, and knowing something of their future
development plans I am excited about new features we will see in
mv.NET. I am in regular contact with BlueFinity support and
development people and we often discuss new features - one of which
was added to the software recently within days of writing a spec.
This is the sort of service that people appreciate from guys like Pete
Schellenbach, Martin Phillips, and application VARs in our community -
and we also get it from BlueFinity.

- The documentation is better for mv.NET than for PDP.NET, and they
are constantly improving it. I honestly think they need to document a
lot more than they do, but documentation always seems to come behind
software development with any of these products. The important thing
is that they really appreciate the value of good documentation and
have a sincere desire to ensure that it is complete. Because the
software has so many features they are concerned about overwhelming
people with too much documentation, which might make the product look
too complex. This means the problem isn't a desire to write docs, but
that they just need to figure out the right format.

- Technically, mv.NET development is completely built into Visual
Studio (2003 and 2005) so you can write .NET code, MV BASIC, and
maintain dictionaries and data all from Visual Studio if you wish.
The libraries in mv.NET are much more rich than in PDP.NET.
Individual methods contain more overloads, which means the product
conforms to developer needs and not the reverse. ADO.NET integration
is more complete and enhancements are being made to allow more
SQL-like queries from an MV DBMS - without ODBC of course.

- Performance seems to be about the same, though I know BlueFinity has
some optimizations planned.

- Finally, why consider mv.NET over PDP.NET? Because other developers
who have used PDP.NET and then tried mv.NET have already switched.
They have the software and made their own evaluations - sometimes it's
helpful to rely on the experience of others.

mv.NET does have occasional bugs: I'd like to see some changes to the
Data Manager which is a GUI for MV file/dict/program maintenance, and
we are working on an activation issue now which is preventing a couple
paying clients from activating their product, but these issues are not
chronic, and they have nothing to do with the actual code and
functionality of a working application. For business and technical
reasons, I see mv.NET as a very stable platform for ongoing
development.

Saludos a todos,
Tony Gravagno, Nebula R&D
TG@ removethisNebula-RnD.com

Joseba,

Queria consultarte sobre el estado del mercado 'Pick' en España. Aqui
en Buenos Aires cada vez hay menos gente trabajando con Pick.

Si bien es cierto que aún hay varias empresas en Pick (basicamente
AP, D3 y algunos r83 o U2), son en su mayoría instalaciones de finales
de los 80s que realizan el soporte de los sistemas por su propia
cuenta, y no nuevos clientes.

Si no me equivoco, actualmente solo hay 2 distribuidores de D3/U2 en
Buenos Aires , pero basicamente trabajan con quienes ya están en Pick.
Para resto del público en general, las bases de datos MV son
completamente desconocidas.

Esto hace que cada día sea mas dificil trabajar con MV por estas
latitudes.

Saludos,

Cristian A. Clavero


jra wrote:

Christian, I believe there are two problems: 1) Resellers in Central
and South America do not use marketing to inform the public about
Pick. 2) The MV DBMS vendors (IBM, RD, etc) do not show any interest
in helping in your markets. If no one cares about informing the
public about the technology then of course it's difficult to sell it.
The same problems are found in the english-speaking world, but at
least people can find CDP and the U2 forum and exchange notes. People
who speak spanish as their primary language don't have these large
support groups, so they are more isolated. The same problem exists
for french, italian, russian, polish, chinese, and other users that
I've spoken with - but while the problem is recognized very few people
want to do anything about it.

<general comment>
"Marketing" is often confused with "Sales". You do marketing to get
the word out to many people who are not direct sales prospects right
at this moment. Generally speaking based on some comments I've heard
- In the Pick market, when a reseller tells someone that his solution
is based on Pick, he thinks he is marketing, but he is really just
selling. Selling to individuals now will not create a ready market of
potential buyers later. The Pick market shrinks because if you tell
someone your solution is based on Pick they have no idea what you're
talking about - because they haven't been exposed to prior marketing.
This should be no surprise to anyone. Everyone seems to recognize the
problem that we lose sales because the general public doesn't know
about Pick, but few people take that next step to fix the problem. If
you aren't going to do any marketing on your own (very general "you",
not for any individual here) then work with your DBMS company to get
them to do marketing to your target prospect audiences. Don't let
your DBMS license fees go into some short-sighted salesman's pocket -
make these companies do something to ensure the continued long-term
survival of the market.
</>

Christian - I am working with Joseba to provide sales and support for
mv.NET in spanish-speaking markets. With Joseba, I welcome an
opportunity to work with VARs in Argentina as well. If you can't sell
"Pick", you may be able to sell ".NET" because of all of the marketing
that Microsoft does. And as many people here will say, we shouldn't
be selling databases or technology anyway, we should be selling
applications. The problem there is usually with the character
screens, and that's where GUI enhancements come in. If you have a
tough time selling Pick/MV, it might be because people always see
character screens in a Pick sales presentation. If you put a new
front-end on apps then they might be easier to sell.

Feel free to contact me if you'd like to discuss any of this

Regards,
Tony
TG@ removethisNebula-RnD.com
(oops, let some of the old me creep out)



"cc" wrote:

T,
I'll give Raining Data a call. I'm sure they'll be fine with this. Can I
use your name?
<g>
Jeff

"Tony Gravagno" <g6q3x9lu53001 (AT) sneakemail (DOT) com.invalid> wrote

Tony, tell, please, how about the others like:

1. Inability to work in the locales other than West European ones.
2. Support for ComponentOne data-avare controls only.
3. National CPs translation between the client and the MV host not even
addressed.

Have some of those issues been fixed so far?

Nick

Hola Cristian:

La situación por aquí es parecida. Además se une el hecho de que el
distribuidor de Raining Data en España "pasa" bastante del tema.
IBM y los productos U2 llevan el mismo camino.
El único que va por otro lado es Intersystems con Caché pero sin
ninguna relación con MV.

Pero no es nada nuevo. Yo coincido con Tony en su diagnóstico.
Yo dividiría la tarta de MV en España en tres segmentos
diferenciados.

- Instalaciones pequeñas. No saben ni les interesa lo que es 'pick'
etc. Sólo quieren aplicaciones. Hay muchas, más de lo que creemos.
Pero se van perdiendo. ¿por qué?. En mi opinión porque lo que si
entra en ese tipo de instalación es Windows y Office a nivel de
usuario. Y quieren utilizar por ejemplo Excel. También temas de WEB.
Es evidente que se puede utilizar cualquier plataforma "pick" integrada
totalmente con Office y con web, mail, fax, etc.. Y no es nada nuevo.
Tony y muchos otros (yo incluido) llevamos haciéndolo más de 10 años
(yo particularmente desde el nacimiento de windows95 y office97 con AP
y Winlink y ViaODBC, e incluso antes con AP/DOS y Grapick,, luego
directamente con D3ODBC desde la versión C4).
Pero la mayoría de los distribuidores en España perdieron ese tren. Y
en lugar de evolucionar con el producto, intentaron cambiar. Algunos lo
consigueron, otros quedaron en el camino. Los que conozco que apostaron
por evolucionar, siguen en el mercado.
Alguna vez, hablando con distribuidores con este tipo de cliente,
siempre he comentado que las plataformas "pick" como las conocemos
(usuarios, licencias, etc.) no tienen demasiado futuro. Pero si lo
podrían tener si los dealers ofrecieran servicios de aplicaciones a
través de internet. Como siempre llegamos a la misma conclusión, lo
importante es "la Aplicación". Hace 6 o 7 meses hubo una charla
interesante por aquí sobre este tema.

- Instalaciones medias entre 30 y 100 usuarios con software propio.
Hay bastantes. La baza principal de este segmento suele ser una
aplicación propia, muy personalizada. Algunas han cambiado. Pero
normalmente los cambios suelen ser bastante traumáticos. Son
organizaciones con muchos años con sistemas que funcionaban bastante
bien. Y muy personalizados. Cuando implantan un ERP generalista, tipo
Navision, SAP, etc. pierden bastantes de esta prestaciones.
Normalmente, si dentro de la organización la toma de decisiones está
en el departamento financiero, suelen migrar. Cuando se involucra
gerencia y tiene alguien en informática siempre son más reacios al
cambio. Pero muchas veces no les queda más remedio, ya que no tienen
quien les resuelva nuevas necesidades, como integración con Office,
integración con Web, integración con Mail y fax, integracion con
clientes y proveedores, etc. El mundo MV muchas veces se ha quedado en
el interface gráfico, pero particularmente a mi no preocupa demasiado
el interface gráfico. Por ejemplo, cuando se habla de introducir
pedidos. El entorno MV siempre ha dicho (muchas veces sin conocimiento
de causa y como defensa) que es mejor un interface de puro texto a un
interface gráfico. Para mi ninguno de los dos es relevante. Lo que yo
quiero es que la mayoría de mis pedidos vengan directamente desde el
cliente, por web, en hojas de cálculo, mediante servicios web, etc.. Y
para eso hay muchas soluciones en el mundo MV (por ejemplo mv.net ).
Otra vez lo que veo es poca preparación en los dealers, poca
inversión. Queremos parecernos a Microsoft pero cuantos pagarían lo
que cuesta un certificado de Microsoft, o peor aun cuantos están
suscritos a MSDN o incluso cuantos compran las licencias de Microsoft.
Pero este segmento del mercado es creciente. Y una vez que descubren
alguien que les integra al mundo y no les dice eso no se puede, acabas
prácticamente reescribiendo sus sistemas y tienes un buen cliente de
por vida.

El tercer nicho en España son grandes empresas con sistemas entre 300
y 600 usuarios. Normalmente tienen un departamento de informática y de
desarrollo. Pero suelen estar controlados por grandes corporaciones,
los que yo conozco en España están controlados o por Fujitsu o por
Sun. Estas grandes corporaciones hacen lo posible por que migren. Y
sólo entran en el mundo MV cuando su cliente se lo exije y buscan
alguien que se lo haga. Pero como gran corporación no suelen valorar
demasiado tu trabajo, siempre eres un mal menor. Pecan de prepotencia.
No es demasiado interesante.

Pero lo más importante es tener buen software, gente preparada y dar
soluciones. Desde mis comienzos en Pick trabajando con Ultimate
recuerdo la cantinela. Primero era Unix, luego Windows, luego Oracle.
Yo siempre decía lo mismo (si buscas en CPD sobre 1997 lo verás), y
por que pararnos en el sistema operativo, por que pararnos en la base
de datos, por que no seguimos con el argumento y trabajamos todos para
instalar Navision o SAP ya que nuestra aplicación tampoco podrá
competir si nos remitimos a la capacidad comercial. Gracias a dios todo
esto está cambiando. Muchos critican a Microsoft por bugs cuando
realmente son problemas de programas de terceros. Exactamente igual que
le ocurría a Pick hace 30 años, muchos desarrollando, algunos buenos,
algunos mediocres y algunos malos (te suena "yo no uso el readu porque
pitan todas las pantallas").
Y te puedo prometer que yo SI tengo clientes nuevos. No tienen ni idea
de que es Pick, MV, etc. pero asumen que tampoco tienen idea de que es
Oracle o SQL Server por mucho que les suene más. Ellos tienen un
problema de gestión y alguien se lo resuelve. Nada más. Y si observo
tanto en España como en este foro que la gente que trabaja con MV cada
día está mejor preparada y cada día podrá generar mejores
productos. Y con mucha cintura. Y creo que lo que realmente hace a algo
competitivo son las personas, al final siempre son las personas.

Un saludo y veremos como se os da el Mundial de Alemania (qué bueno es
Messi aunque yo sea del Athletic de Bilbao y el juegue en el Barça)

joseba

InterSystems si estará apoiando a CacheMV en España...
Lo hemos demonstrado este Marzo en el International Spectrum y en
nuestra "DevCon" (conferencia de developers),
y installado una version pre-beta a cualquier persona que atendia
nuestra "hands-on" seminar en Spectrum.
Ahora mismo estamos preparando una version beta, que estará disponible
por nuestro sitio de web dentro
de poco.
Los capabilidades multivalue en Cache van a ser incluidos en todos los
productos Cache..., no va a ser un producto
separado, ni un "add-on" que tienes que comprar aparte.
Creemos que el mercado MultiValue en España puede benificiar de
nuestra presencia...

Hola ScottJ:

I have read about InterSystems and Cache in Spectrum. That's why i
mention it in my post. But i have not seen anything in spain about it.
I usually see advs of Cache. And i see adds of cache with CCS (a big
software company that uses cache since many years ago). None of them
mention MV. And i know i am in the database of Intersystems and i have
not received anything new.

Do not missunderstand me Scott. I am very interesting on that. Simply i
suppose they are not making marketing yet. And yes, i agree, Spain is a
good place for MV and Cache may be very interesting.

But Spectrum was in USA. If you want to make something similar in
Spain, specially migrating from D3, let me know and i can promise i can
go there with 3 or 4 end users and with 3 or 4 software companies that
work with D3..