A Steady and Confident Course

[Steven H. Blackwell]

 

 

The month’s time since the release of Version 14 of the FileMaker Platform has seen a significant number of postings, blogs, and other commentaries about the future of the Platform and of the company. While some of these lack grounding in reality, as a group they indicate some higher than normal level of unease in the developer community.

Calm seas never made for skillful mariners; however, we need to steady ourselves and our course here. Despite the fact that my activity level in the developer community is now reduced from prior years, I nevertheless feel some necessity to speak out on these topics, especially from the perspective gained over the past twenty-five years.

We have been here before, several times in fact.  And in all these previous cycles, we have steadied ourselves.  FileMaker, Inc. has improved the products.  Developers have improved their skills.

Reports of the impending demise of this Platform, to paraphrase Mark Twain, are more than somewhat exaggerated.

We have done best in the past when we have followed some fundamental concepts:

·      Engage the company and its representatives constructively about our business plans and about theirs.

·      Integrate ourselves into the formal organization structure, such as the FBA and the Developer Conference.

·      Listen carefully to our customers/clients, ascertain their needs, and devise ways to help solve their business problems. We must assure that they have the best experience possible with the FileMaker Platform.

·      Acquire the insight, understanding, and skills to adapt the products and the Platform to solving those customer/client problems.

When we remain steady in our goals and in our course and at the same time become and remain agile in our tactical maneuvers, we succeed. Failure is always a possibility; without the possibility of failure, there is no opportunity for success.

Some are leaving the platform, in several instances dramatically and loudly. Others has chosen to add to their repertoire by learning and using other technologies. Still others have based their principal offerings on the FileMaker Platform. Each of us must make this decision, and then often we must remake that decision again in future times.

It is worthy of note that the products have been around for thirty years, a long eternity in the information technology arena. This developer community has been around over twenty years. This year’s Conference is the 20^th Anniversary. The company has been profitable every quarter since its creation. 

A favorite Wall Street aphorism is “Past results are not a guarantee of future performance.” FileMaker, Inc. and its executive management know this. They have changed directions and emphasis in some areas; we will, I predict, see more changes in still others.

As FileMaker developers, we too, must constantly reinvent ourselves and in effect outmode ourselves before others outmode us. That will be the challenge going forward. I’ll still be here for a while at least yet to come. And I am looking forward to that challenge. We will not discover new lands without consenting sometimes to lose sight of the shoreline for a long time. I believe FileMaker will continue to be an important part of our future so long as we have confidence and so long as we do not fear those open waters.

 

Steven H. Blackwell

Platinum Member Emeritus

FileMaker Business Alliance

[carlosnorvik]

Hi Steve:

Great post!

What you indicate is true in many lines of business, I work mainly as a manufacturers agent and in a way it is similar to a developers job. Our performance depends a lot on what the principal  does (Filemaker in your case), praise and complaints must be relayed to them.

I am mostly an end user, I started using Filemaker because it was very similar to my previous software (Lotus Approach) both to develop and use. Retraining in the office was quick and easy. In general I am happy with Filemaker, except with "Find" which was far better in Approach. Everybody in my office has the same opinion, they all miss the "old" search ways.

Please take this not as a complaint but as something developers in this forum can relay to FM, after all what developers want are happy end users.

A) It is annoying to have to make a new request for finding several items. There are scripted alternatives but that is more a workaround. For example if I want to look for Anna, John and Raymond, in FM I have to go: Ctrl+F Anna  Ctrl+N John Ctr+N Anna Enter. In Approach it was far more practical: Ctrl+F Anna; John; Raymond Enter

  ii) Finding John who does not live in Kansas, involves using omit and it can get confusing. Ctrl+F John in name field plus <>Kansas in State field is far easier and faster.

iii) To display a single line in a portal, you can use scripted portal filtering in FM (Have not gotten there yet in my applications), and as far as I understand that does not filter the totals (A one line portal is a solution for filtered totals, that I have already managed). In Approach a find request for the item (or items), displayed that single item in the portal together with the total for only the found items. If you wanted to see the whole portal again it as a simple Ctrl+A.

Have a nice weekend.

Carlos

[Michelle Logan]

I do not visit the forum as much as before so, did I miss something...is FM going away?

The post is somewhat cryptic and I may not be reading between the lines correctly.

Edited June 13, 2015 by Michelle Logan

[Josh Ormond]

He is referring to some posts that have garnered a lot of discussion on other forums ( and a few on this one ), and in some blog posts made. 

No, FM isn't going away. That's what he was saying in the post. For all the noise that has arisen since the release of 14, there is some ( even a lot ) that is not founded in reality. Expressing yourself is a good thing usually. But sometimes it's just noise and doesn't help other than to create unease.

Stephen's post is a reassuring reminder that the sky isn't falling...and yes, he has many insights into the platform and the company that runs it.

[Lee Smith]

I agree with Josh, +1

[Hal Gumbert]

He is referring to some posts that have garnered a lot of discussion on other forums ( and a few on this one ), and in some blog posts made. 

No, FM isn't going away. That's what he was saying in the post. For all the noise that has arisen since the release of 14, there is some ( even a lot ) that is not founded in reality. Expressing yourself is a good thing usually. But sometimes it's just noise and doesn't help other than to create unease.

Stephen's post is a reassuring reminder that the sky isn't falling...and yes, he has many insights into the platform and the company that runs it.

​Josh is referring to these links which ARE all based in reality. Putting your head in the sand still means the world still exists.

http://timdietrich.me/blog/goodbye-filemaker/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/filemakerdevs/

 

https://www.facebook.com/filemakermagazine/posts/1642243565988816 

http://forums.filemaker.com/posts/ca4ebb30ed

[Wim Decorte]

Putting your head in the sand

​Oy... I don't think that is happening here.

A lot of us have been around FM and its community for over 20 years.  And these things happen, people come and go.

Tim was a great contributor and he will be missed.  I'm just worried that is a case of the "the grass is always greener on the other side"

[RodSierra]

Yes reality, and very much so, thanks Hal.  We quit Filemaker at the release of V12 and have never looked back.  Quite frankly instead of trying to convince our clients to spend their money on upgrading FM we have now made more money by charging a bit more for our upgrades, yet saving our clients a bundle by not having to pay FM more and more.  

The ever increasing price of the FM platform and their notorious policy of spoon feeding features pushed us over the wall at V12 release.  

Just as a side note I downloaded the FM14 trial and it is still not compatible with most asian language character input, this has been an issue since V7 went unicode and has been duly ignored by FM since then despite countless reports to them directly.

 

 

[LaRetta]

We quit Filemaker at the release of V12 and have never looked back.  

​But ... you come here to read posts for what reason then?

[RodSierra]

Quite simply we maintain our existing customers with our V11 releases and they have questions about upgrading or if they can or why they should, and well frankly I have no love for FM anymore.  They almost cost me my business with the FM6 upgrade problems and I pumped a lot of money and development time into their platform hoping beyond hope that they would come thru in the end with a litany of issues we all had over the years....well that never happened instead we just kept hacking and finding work arounds.   

When FM12 hit the boards and within 1 hour of its release they had an official response on their board saying there were conversion and speed problems it was just too much...I bit the bullet and gave in hiring others to do the work that I could do on FM myself transferring our core code to be autonomous to us, no dependency on FM whims.

So now I have switched platforms, lost control of the detail work on my solutions, but still have a curiosity and quite frankly animosity for this company that cost me a lot because I hung on to similar words that Steven has spoke of here, its quite frankly all spin as far as I'm concerned, but that's because I've been burned and had no where to turn at critical times with FM.

Being totally honest here, nothing more, and hope to save others the same pain somewhere down the road.  There is no other forum I'd still love to be part of on a day to day basis, the regulars here are some of the best so this has nothing to do with the forum, sorry LaRetta but you asked.    

 

[LaRetta]

There is no other forum I'd still love to be part of on a day to day basis, the regulars here are some of the best so this has nothing to do with the forum, sorry LaRetta but you asked.    

​No problem, Rod, I was truly just curious.  I too have gone through a few phases of throwing up my hands at FMI (around their lack of response to serious bugs) so none of this surprises me in the least.  Reasons for staying or leaving FM are as varied (and personal) as each developer making that decision.

In this fast-moving technology, only companies willing to remain on that cutting edge will survive.  We've seen great companies come and go in this whirlwind software industry and FMI may or may not keep up with the pace but they are still a serious contender today; currently there are far more businesses wanting FM solutions than there are developers to handle them.

Your are right that some of the regulars here are some of the best people you will ever meet.

[Hal Gumbert]

​Oy... I don't think that is happening here.

A lot of us have been around FM and its community for over 20 years.  And these things happen, people come and go.

Tim was a great contributor and he will be missed.  I'm just worried that is a case of the "the grass is always greener on the other side"

​It's not a case of the grass is greener. It's more like that grass is turning brown. It's true that folks come and go. Folks like Tim have been around for a long time. I've been around since 1987. Things are different now.

Since FM 12, the perpetual pricing is through the roof and annual / rental pricing is the only affordable option. In the past, when we'd build solutions for clients we'd sell seats and make few dollars. Not much but a little bit and save the client some money too. Now, we're pushed out of the sales process except for the initial sale. I used to feel like a developer, but now I'm developing to create more reoccurring revenue for FileMaker and I'm not included in any of that.

The pricing is pushing out many small businesses. It's just too expensive. Yea, annual / rentals make it more affordable, but that's like going to buy a car and only asking only about payments. One of the biggest selling points used to be the affordability of FileMaker. We could save our client's serious money on how fast we can develop a solution plus the cost of FileMaker. Now our development costs are a drop in the bucket compared to the licensing over x years. Developing a solution with other products that take 2 to 10 times longer to develop are now less expensive over the long haul. That's NEVER been the case until recently.

We know things are changing with how FileMaker sees itself, but we don't have any clue what the destination is, but if seems like its going to be rentals. Based on the rumors, FileMaker will be offering hosting and pushing out the folks that offer hosting. We don't have a clue though. Apple demos what is coming in the future to the public. FileMaker only shows this to those attend DevCon, not even those of us in the FBA such as Tim.

We have no access to the list of bugs or feature requests. Other companies share those lists with there developers so they can vote on their top five issues on what is most important to them so the companies have an idea what will make the product work better.

Updates come every 1.5 years or so. Other companies ship updates quarterly with bug fixes AND new features. In the case of expanding ExecuteSQL to include INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE we have to assume we won't have that until 2017 at the earliest. Submitting features and bugs to a black hole doesn't work.

We don't have a developer program. For years, I thought that was the FBA, but just learned this year that the FBA is only a sales program. I feel silly that I haven't realized this until now.

What are the options? Stick with it, look around, and start making a move. I hope, hope, hope, things change with FileMaker. I want to keep using it for the next 30 years. I don't see myself just going away, but I'm already in the process of COMPLETELY rewriting one of our solutions in Xojo. It's going to hurt to have to redo all that work, but I don't seem to have a choice. FileMaker is just too expensive for small business.

It's kinda like a formula:  dev cost + ( fm cost * years ) = client budget

If one of the costs go up, the other has to down. Sure you could increase both, but only so much. If FileMaker can get a handle on the costs, I can handle it, but now the solution seems to remove the FileMaker cost all together and increase the dev cost significantly in order to remove the annual costs.

We'll just have to wait for the DevCon Keynote rumors to see what is going to happen.

[Jeroen Aarts]

Frankly, I am with Steven and Wim here. Some people decide to leave the community, for whatever reasons the might have, personal or business-wise. This is natural and it happens everywhere. I find it strange to see so many people on so many forums these days criticising FMI, almost desperately, where they base their business primarily on the FileMaker platform.

But on the other hand, I think these are signs that we do not live in the world where FileMaker saw the light. Technology is changing, developers ask more transparency and FMI should take some of the concerns seriously. But still, I strongly believe in the FileMaker platform and its future, so I'd really welcome a positive approach.