As 2016 comes to a close, experts in the MultiValue community are looking ahead at what 2017 may offer in the MV space.
Steve O’Neal, a principal solutions architect at Rocket Software, believes open standards will continue to be important even as they continue to change. “For MultiValue developers, open access via an http service layer will help developers stay closer to their MultiValue database and associated applications. This translates to increased flexibility for developing in any language, such as JavaScript using the Node.js framework,” said O’Neal.
MultiValue vendors will stay committed to working with constantly changing open standards and development platforms by harnessing RESTful web services. By supporting open standards, MultiValue vendors help the developers extend and reuse their existing, world-class applications.
According to Paul Giobbi, president of Zumasys Inc, Zumasys is seeing dramatic revenue growth as its Pick-based software products continue to gain momentum driven by the move to the Zumasys Cloud and the rise of NoSQL databases, such as MongoDB.
“As Web 2.0 frameworks emerge, we are integrating browser-based User Interfaces (UI) which will open up a world of opportunity for Pick applications and developers,” said Giobbi. “jBASE will continue to help attract a new generation of developers to MultiValue with its native approach, which makes it easy for developers to readily see and understand the application layer.”
jBASE turns older MultiValue applications into “native” applications for common operating systems, such as Windows and UNIX, he said. Newer administrators appreciate the familiar design and the ability to manage, secure, and administer the system using modern techniques and tools, he added.
Additionally the trend toward using real-time integration and RESTful web services for integrating MultiValue applications will continue and accelerate as more cloud-based and mobile applications become available, explained Keith Lambert, vice president of marketing and business development at Kore.
“Companies will expect that software they license will have more open application programming interfaces (APIs) for this purpose. This will put more pressure on MV application vendors to open their systems more by providing of these APIs for third-party use,” Lambert said. “Integration software will become an even more important part of the IT landscape as these APIs will make it easier to share data between best-in-class systems in real-time, blurring the lines between applications.”
Lambert also believes that for e-commerce (B2B and B2C), mobile shopping will be even more important and become the primary way individuals buy online, instead of primarily doing research on mobile and then buying using a desktop browser.
“To support this, e-commerce software providers will adopt a mobile-first design and e-commerce packages will no longer offer mobile as an optional feature,” Lambert said. “The mobile-first philosophy - responsive web design - will become the de facto standard for all websites as consumers will expect the sites they visit to offer similar features with a user experience optimized to the platform they are using (desktop, tablet, or smartphone).”