Ten Reasons to Attend Magic Software Users Conference 2015

Ten Reasons to Attend Magic Software Users Conference 2015

1. Immediate return on investment – Attend educational sessions for IT and development professionals that allow you to leverage ideas from other Magic developers and IT pros in your own projects.

2. Maximize what you’ve got - Take home the latest tips and tricks, knowledge and updates from Magic Software R&D, support and global services. No fluff, just hands-on education.

3. Excellent value for the level of intensive education - Learn from others’ experiences, including case studies, developer show-and-tell, hands-on workshops, ask the experts, discussions and networking breaks. We’re emphasizing two-way interactive learning and sharing this year.

4. Leverage others’ experiences - Discover new and cost effective technologies and processes, budget-friendly ways to expand on your existing development and integration knowledge and real-world developer and IT professionals’ experiences that will guide you in your own actions.

5. Efficient access 1:1 Meetings – Meet personally with leaders from Magic Software in R&D, technical support, professional services, executive, sales and marketing functions who are dedicated to providing you with knowledge, demos and personal answers. We have a dedicated one-on-one meeting area. Schedule meetings with any and all Magic staff as needed. Plus many of our experienced independent software vendors will be presenting education sessions.

6. Everyone from your organization can benefit - Return to the office with new knowledge and experiences. Plus attendees will be given conference presentations and sample files to share throughout their organization.

7. It’s a cost cutting conference - With entertainment and meals subsidized by Magic, the benefits out-weigh the cost any day of the week.

8. Customer selected education – IT professionals and business executives just like you have suggested sessions and guided the selection of the most important agenda items. Unlike sterile trade shows, the content of is focused on Magic xpa and Magic xpi. This is an ideal opportunity for prospective customers to get an idea of how Magic xpa Application Platform and Magic xpi Integration Platform are viewed by real customers.

9. Be in the know – By attending general sessions and executive updates you’ll hear the latest news from Magic Software and its effects on the whole community. See the world premier of Magic Software’s new embedded in-memory data grid technology.

10. Build your professional expertise – Participate in the Magic xpa Track or Magic xpi Track to grow professionally and personally. Send at least two participants from your IT team to cover both tracks. Participants in the conference build friendships that last a lifetime and make career connections and business alliances that extend far beyond the intensive three-day format.

Lot's of fun too: Poolside Welcome Reception, Casino DInner and Cruise, MLB Baseball Game, Traditional California Beach Party!

What are you waiting for? Register now!

Reason #5: Upgrading to Magic xpa reduces risk versus C#, ASP, or Java

20 Reasons to Migrate Magic eDeveloper, uniPaaS and Magic xpa to .NET by Upgrading Rather than Converting

Reason #5: Upgrading to Magic xpa reduces risk versus C#, ASP, or Java

As Magic customers rely on applications to support key business functions, it is important to ensure that the application resides in the latest fully supported versions of Magic technologies.  The choice for those running applications between Magic eDeveloper to .NET conversion and Magic eDeveloper to C#, ASP or Java conversion is an important decision fraught with risk.

IT risk identification, management and response is a key concern for all enterprise IT departments. Senior executives and management have a responsibility of “Assuring investors and shareholders that a ‘standard of due care’ around mitigating IT risks is being met by the organization.” (IT Governance Institute, COBIT 4.1 Framework, 2007). In an enterprise environment, there is considerable risk in working with unsupported architectures, and this risks non-compliance with federal legislation and SOX guidelines.  In fact, our Fortune 500 customers tell us that the upgrade to Magic xpa is essential to maintaining SOX compliance. We have to note that Magic’s platform is just one piece of the overall architecture of the business computing environment, and as other components of the architecture change, it is important to ensure that all components are compatible.  Hardware, Infrastructure, Operating Systems and Databases that come in touch with Magic Applications, are constantly changing by their respective vendors, and evolving irrespective of the computing technology in use.  Most of these vendors tend to have limited life spans on their deliverables and the needs of a complex computing environment require prudent upgrades of these components.

Reason #5: Upgrading to Magic xpa reduces risk versus C#, ASP, or Java

Infrastructure changes are driven by a number of factors: 1) Lack of available parts for older hardware may lead to BIOS, processor or other incompatibilities; 2) Operating System versions that are under cease-of-support and end-of-life conditions; 3)  Enterprise IT mandates and “green” initiatives; 4) Change-of-behavior or discontinued features in databases, middleware and other components. Indeed, upgraded operating systems and database versions often provide tremendous advantages in terms of performance, integrity and security.  Should an infrastructure component upgrade be unsupported by the older application platform technology, there is considerable risk that business operations could be disrupted:

a)    Because the unsupported component may cause the Magic technology to become unpredictable, or cease to work altogether.

b)    Because an older component may fail and it may be difficult to source an older compatible replacement.

c)    The older the version, the less the likelihood of available service-level agreements, warranties, support or the human resources knowledgeable about older technologies and problems, this can lead to delays that may take a long time to diagnose and/or resolve.

d)    Development work may increasingly involve complex workarounds and fixes;

e)    Production system down time can increase to unacceptable levels, up to and including complete system failure.

Magic applications are often part of a larger Corporate Enterprise Application Portfolio; it is important that your applications do not become an “island”, with no ability to interact with newer technologies.  The latest versions of Magic xpa 2.x are constantly being updated to take advantage of newer emerging technologies and standards to ensure interoperability with other industry standard technologies including .NET.

Both risk and cost savings are compelling reasons to ensure that all elements of your Magic applications will be utilizing the latest technologies from Magic Software. The IT Governance Institute suggests that the goal of risk response is to “Ensure that IT-related risk issues, opportunities and events are addressed in a cost-effective manner and in line with business priorities.” (IT Governance Institute, Enterprise Risk: Identify, Govern and Manage IT Risk, The Risk IT Framework Exposure Draft, 2009.) The problem with converting to C#.NET, ASP.NET or Java is that they all increase cost and risk. There is much more effort after the conversion to maintaining an application with large programming teams required to accomplish what could be accomplished by a single Magic developer before. Costs skyrocket with the code-centric approaches, risks mount as unending communication cycles are generated by those trying to figure out what the machine generated code does, and bugs spread across the code-base as developers unfamiliar with the language or the business logic introduce new issues and risks that are simply not present when upgrading.

But the time to upgrade is now (actually its way poast time, but not too late). Magic Software removed support for eDeveloper 9.4 in December 2009, while eDeveloper 10.2 was superseded by uniPaaS; and uniPaaS is now superseded by Magic xpa 2.x. 

The importance of moving from eDeveloper 9.4  to Magic xpa in a timely manner, and continuing to leverage the investment made in  Magic applications is only magnified when considering the risk your company is exposed to when not fully migrated to Magic xpa and .NET.

As many businesses continue to expand their vision of a fully integrated Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Web Services, RIA, SaaS, Green IT, etc., the importance to the business of using the latest Technology Stack available demands high visibility.  The success of your IT team in the eyes of internal business customers depends on your reputation for deployment on Magic Software’s modern extensible platform, Magic xpa Application Platform, which can become an integral part of your enterprise’s world-class technology architecture.

For additional information on how an upgrade to Magic xpa is superior to Magic eDeveloper to .NET conversion please convert here. 

Mobile Saturday

In this demo, Magic demonstrates how you can easily develop applications that deploy natively on all mobile devices. The sample app is sort of silly, an "asset management" app for families in which family members set meetings like "portfolio management review." That made me laugh, but then the video gets into the Magic xpa Studio and shows how-to add form controls, bind variables, set data sources for drop-down lists, and so on. Not bad!

One nice aspect is that the new application does not have to be redistributed to users. The next time they run the app, it is simply the new and enhanced version that executes. In this sense, RIA apps, are a lot like SaaS or web-based apps. 

With the Magic xpa Application Platform, a single development effort can create apps that run on multiple devices such as the Android example in the demo. 

Be sure to register for the Magic Software Users Conference 2013.