FM versus "the others"

[jmirandav]

Dear friends suddenly the situation has become a little odd. Let me explain you. For a few years (quite a few!) I have been using FM for my own needs and for may office,, until I decided to use it for commercial purposes, somethin that has been pleasant from every point of view. So fa so good but... Now seems that the only solutions a "serous" company would acquire are the ones made with Oracle or Informix or something like that, my work, now is not coding or analizing the sistems but triyng to convine the prospective clients that FM is an excelent product.

Hey, amigos help me find examples of large companies using our beloved FM please.

Saludos,

[Anatoli]

FileMaker is the best database (and Solutions written in FileMaker) in the World for Workgroups with up to 250 people.

Here it is quite big company.

Unlimited number of Workgroups can exist in large and/or International Company.

Worker can be member of many Workgroups.

That is the Fast growing segment of IT markets. FileMaker hasn't got any serious competitor in this segment. Oracle is too big (Informix is not doing well and it was just saved by IBM) and Access is too small.

[JPaul]

I agree with Anatoli but only partially, this time: from my point of view FM succeed over competitors because it can stay in a 'not higly specialized' workgroup while other DBs require an high degree programming knowledge and DB engine management.

Usually Ms Excel used as DB in which users put a lot of info in a stupid grid, then sort columns & do search via menu-tools ...!

In most cases MS Access is used in 'grid mode' (as it would be a spreadsheet) because taking the control of a form, of their events and drive the program flow involves VBA programming and SQL knowledge.

FM gives the opportunity, also to not specialized people, to build their honest applications without great programming efforts and this, for me, means only a thing: it is USER FRIENDLY.

The above prods., due to their techical complexity, long their lifes became SPECIALIST FRIENDLY (and not even).

But, as someone said, this is another story .......

To Javier:

does the people know what DB runs under the quality control & assurance of a famous italian 'red car ....': try to guess (but answer is easy: FM with 150 fully connected users !)

I saw the solution: FMantastic !

[ June 04, 2001: Message edited by: JPaul ]

[ June 04, 2001: Message edited by: JPaul ]

[MacNut]

Meet Some of Our [FileMaker Inc] Customers

From FMI's website.

Adobe Systems

Alaska Airlines

Anheuser-Busch Companies Inc.

Bayer Corporation

Blue Cross / Blue Shield

Boeing

Bristol Myers Squibb

California Department of Motor Vehicles

Charles Schwab

Chase Manhattan Bank

Coca Cola Company

ConAgra Inc.

Daimler Chrysler Corporation

Dreamworks SKG

Emerson Electric Company

EMI Music Distribution

Federated Merchandising Group

General Dynamics

General Mills

GTE Service Corporation

Honeywell Data Instruments

Ingram Micro

International Paper Company

Kaiser Permanente

Keystone Foods Corporation

KPMG Peat Marwick

Levi Strauss & Co.

Liberty Mutual Insurance Company

Lockheed Martin

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Mayo Foundation

NASA

Nike

Nokia Mobil Phones America

Nortel Networks

Oxford Health Plans

Philip Morris Company

Pizza Hut

Reader's Digest Association

RJR Nabisco Inc.

RR Donnelley

SAIC

Symantec

Time Life Books

TRW

United Airlines

Walgreens

Warner Brothers Studios

Wells Fargo

Westinghouse Savannah River Company

[Kurt Knippel]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Javier Miranda V.:

Dear friends suddenly the situation has become a little odd. Let me explain you. For a few years (quite a few!) I have been using FM for my own needs and for may office,, until I decided to use it for commercial purposes, somethin that has been pleasant from every point of view. So fa so good but... Now seems that the only solutions a "serous" company would acquire are the ones made with Oracle or Informix or something like that, my work, now is not coding or analizing the sistems but triyng to convine the prospective clients that FM is an excelent product.

Hey, amigos help me find examples of large companies using our beloved FM

---

Filemaker, Inc can provide you with an exhaustive list of huge companies and organizations that use Filemaker.

One of the key things to keep mind when discussing this is to find out what they want to do. Oracle is not simply the solution for large organizations. There is a pretty specific market for Oracle solutions, they are generally expesive to implement, and usually require a full-time Oracle DBA onsite. Of course it is sickeningly powerful and can handle huge amount of data. But not every solution for a large organization needs this.

I beleive that GM uses Filemaker for some things, and they are arguably the largest corporation in the world. I would even think that both MS and Oracle use Filemaker for some things.

[jmirandav]

Thank you dear friends, your posts give me enough "ammo" to convince my clients of the "robustness" of FM. I'll inform you of the results.

Saludos

To JPaul: Do you mean the red car with the "Cavalino Rampante"?

[Ivan Tan]

I work for an British International School. We pretty much adopted Filemaker to serve our database needs for many things.

It's simple and easy to deploy.

Once deploy maintainence is virtually free.

[Matthew F]

I think it all boils down to whether FM can do what you want it to, and with how much expense and effort? Even though I'm a FM user there are times when I could use some addiional features. 4D, has more powerful scripting and allows drag-and-drop programming. Imagine that you would like to move inventory via a GUI by simply dragging it from one bin to another. With FM you're still pretty much stuck with lists, forms, and scripted dialogue boxes.