V7 User Benefits

[Oldfogey]

Only two of my customers actually have FMP installed - both V6. When V7 was announced, I told them to ignore it until V7.5 came out. Well, V7.0.2 or something has arrived and I suspect this is IT until V8.

Customer A has one application only. They are most unlikely to want any others. (This is a dream business - simple 'product', no competition and no need to diversify, etc.) I can see no earthly reason for them to upgrade before they are forced to by the usual hardware/software cycle.

Customer B has many applications. Their history goes back to V1. Their major application is quite complex and, although beautifully written , it could do with a rewrite.

As a developer, I would love to convert both of these customers. I can hardly wait to get stuck into a complex DB, as opposed to the midgets I've looked at so far. The problem is that I can only find one single feature that might be of interest to the users; that is the ability to format text field according to the content - big deal! All the other features are for developers to create solutions more easily. Ooops, I forgot about security; they'll love that.

Customer B has 2-5 users at any one time. The traffic is negligible; if it were practicable, one user could do all the processing in about an hour per day.

Does anyone have any bright ideas about just what my customer(s) might get out of upgrading?

[H.P.]

Other than security, I don't see any reason why your clients should spend time, money and take the risk of upgrading Maybe it is you who is interested in FM 7 and its new features

[Ender]

The new security model is a driving force in migrating the databases in my organization. That's not an improvement that users will really notice, but it is something I can use to sell this upgrade (actually we have a subscription that automatically got us the upgrade, the big expense is in my time and in OS upgrades.)

However, after upgrading to FM7, I expect I will be able to implement new database features at a faster pace and with some new tricks that can improve user's efficiency.

The speed improvements over a WAN are the other main reason why going to FM7 makes sense for my organization.