Announcements made during the VII GeneXus Alliance Meeting

Representatives from 100 GeneXus' distributing companies and ARTech's business partners gathered at the VII GeneXus Alliance meeting, which took place two weeks ago. The objective of the meeting was to share and catch up on GeneXus-related commercial and technical issues.
Apart from discussing GeneXus's marketing and sales aspects, the following new ARTech products were introduced with their corresponding trading policies: GXPortal, GXQuery, GXplorer 4.0, and GXFlow.

One of the novelties at the VII Meeting was the release of GXFlow 7.5 RC, and the announcement of the product's final version. This is expected to occur at the end of the month, and it will come with changes in its commercialization and distribution strategy. This new version has meant an important investment in the development of GXFlow, which has reached its final stage since its inception as a GeneXus' annex. Although the whole commercial strategy was not introduced, there was an announcement concerning the incorporation of individual owned licenses on the engine of ARTech's Workflow tool and the implementation of a charging system for using GXPM. "The price will not become an obstacle in its incorporation as a development tool", Alfonso Berriel, GeneXus Consulting General Manager, assured. A flexible approach will be used for dealing with the different situations; we are particularly interested in defining specific agreements which will lead to the incorporation of GXFlow in each of the packages and systems", he added.

Berriel explained that by simplifying the development task, GXFlow 7.5 will become more integrated into GeneXus. He also mentioned that the plan is to work more thoroughly on this integration in order to position GXFlow as a GeneXus add-in.
GXFlow 7.5 also offers new features for the end user, which will have a new design on the interface that can be customized through Web Components.
"GXPortal's RC version, a product for the development of dynamic Web portals, requires no need for programming and will be released at the end of May", announced Gerardo Wisosky, Partner Relations Manager & GeneXus Query, GXplorer, and GXPortal Manager. With the release of RC, an offer will be made to both GeneXus Alliance software houses and GeneXus distributors, who will receive the product at no charge to develop their own portals.

Wisosky reported that GXPortal will be offered in three versions (light, enterprise, and corporate), and will be commercialized via the Web and through wholesalers.
The light version is aimed at final users wishing to create their own portal (it includes the designer and navigator, Workflow-free content administration, and user administration). The enterprise version has incorporated the content manager, the community component for the portal, and a role-based security system. Finally, the corporate version adds the integration of GXPortal into Outlook and into Win, Web Olaps, and GXflow applications via the Internet, plus a hierarchical security system and consulting services.
Likewise, GXPortal Product Manager announced that agreements are being negotiated with Internet Service Providers for hosting portals developed with GXPortal.

The commercial policy of the new GXQuery, already being used by end users, was also reviewed. With regards to that, Wisosky highlighted that the product -free of annual charges, and including the metadata manager at no cost- will substitute 80% of the reports that are not currently being made following procedures. GXQuery is commercialized via the Web (http://www.gxquery.com), and through GeneXus distributors. Software houses in particular may enter into agreements with ARTech or its distributors for license pre-purchase, so that the tool can be incorporated into their own solutions.
Following a similar commercial strategy, version 4.0 of GXplorer will be launched in June. This ARTech Data Warehousing tool provides datawarehouse automatic development as an added value. Wisosky announced that with this version, GXplorer will incorporate individual owned licenses control. Product support will also be carried out through a forum. It will be commercialized via the Web and through distributors. The possibility of entering into agreements with software houses, which may be interested in incorporating the product into their packages, will also be offered. Another announcement made at the meeting was the implementation of GXplorer LAB for developing Data Warehousing projects with ARTech's support. The company has actually offered its facilities and assistance in terms of training and consulting so that companies are able to obtain a DW project under production in little time and at a minimal cost.
This is some of the news from the VII GeneXus Alliance meeting, where GeneXus' development plans for the short and long-run were also introduced. Be sure not to miss the next issue for news on this topic.