Hershel Fisch wrote:
On 12/5/05 10:20 PM, "Richard Gaskin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
"Business" is pretty broad, and no doubt one could defined it in ways
that might make Rev look insufficient.
E.g. A heavy distribution wholesaler, accounting package, a big retailer
The medical software I've been building is being distributed by the one
of largest publishers of professional medical media. The qualitative
analysis package I've made has been carried by the world leader in
qualitative publishing.
But accounting? That's not a technical challenge as much as it is a
marketing one, for all the reasons outlined in Moore's "Crossing the
Chasm" and "Inside the Tornado". In short, QuickBooks has some 80% of
the market, with MYOB and Microsoft Money taking up most of the rest.
Any remaining potential for a profitable new entry is in specialized
sub-markets, and we have one member of this list who's done just that,
making a business accounting package specifically for the rental industry.
That may be why you don't see leading accounting packages (or word
processors or HTML authoring tools or photo enhancement tools or the
other major categories) done in Rev or BASIC or even Python for that
matter, no matter how capable these languages are:
The "sweet spot" for development tools at this level is in vertical markets.
While it's possible for something like Dreamweaver to be made in Rev
with externals used for computationally-intensive portions (esp. if they
used the embedded engine option which exposes deeper APIs), the bigger
hurdle is internal politics (and the multi-million-dollar frameworks
these companies use internally). I've done enough work with Fortune 500
companies to understand that there are many drivers beyond ROI for their
tool choices.
And it pretty much takes a Fortune 500 company to compete in today's
software market for the major application categories.
But then there's everything else, the thousands of vertical-market
categories we address today, and the million others waiting to be
discovered.
That's where tools like Rev and RealBASIC get used.
As an aside, it's worth noting that for many years a number of helper
apps that shipped with Quicken were written in SuperCard; might still be
true for all I know, haven't used Quicken in some time. Like those of
us here who make a living from developing with Rev, Intuit recognized
the ROI benefits of using an xTalk, and exploited that well.
Maybe one day the engineering team at AOL will realize they're wasting
about 85% of their development budget by not using Rev. The AOL client
is a natural fit for Rev, but good luck even scheduling that meeting.
But evidently it can be defined in other ways as well, since many
business make, sell, and buy Rev-based apps, and report a high degree of
satisfaction and a strong ROI at all levels of that chain.
I'm sure you've seen Rev's Case Studies page:
<http://www.runrev.com/section/case_studies/>
True, RunRev's done a crappy job of cataloging all of the professional
apps out there, but even as a small cross-section there's some
interesting stuff there.
For sure it bring some recognition.
Imagine how much more it would bring if it were anywhere close to
complete. There's a *lot* of Rev-based apps out there....
--
Richard Gaskin
Managing Editor, revJournal
_______________________________________________________
Rev tips, tutorials and more: http://www.revJournal.com
_______________________________________________
use-revolution mailing list
[email protected]
Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription
preferences:
http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
