The Business End of Alpha Software for independent developers

[Steve Wood]

Re: The Business End of Alpha Software for independent developers

And any more issues that can come up in Steve's conference, and I hope there are many, and I hope it will be achievable for most.

I cannot have a conference until we have a concise set of Goals and Objectives for the meeting. Maybe what I will do is use my survey software to collect that information from you guys up here plus my list of other developers. I will draft the survey then post the link here.

[cptutrecht]

Re: The Business End of Alpha Software for independent developers

Thanks Steve for your initiative!

I cannot have a conference until we have a concise set of Goals and Objectives for the meeting. Maybe what I will do is use my survey software to collect that information from you guys up here plus my list of other developers. I will draft the survey then post the link here.

[mronck]

Re: The Business End of Alpha Software for independent developers

I will start a new thread on this once we have clarity on the goals and objective. Here is a start...

Topic: Summit Meeting for all Alpha Five Developers

Theme: Improve the business prospects for every Alpha Five Developer worldwide

Terms:

Prospects - those businesses and individuals who are in a position to use our services.
Clients - those business and individuals already using our services.
Developers - us guys.

Goals:

- Increase awareness of Alpha Five as a viable and even better solution.
- more goals here...

Possible solutions:

- Coordinate Developer's "sales pitch" to present a consistent message to prospective clients
- Evangalize the product
- Tweak Alpha's marketing and sales approach to assist in building interest among Prospects as well as Developers.
- Coordinate Developer's marketing efforts to build this awareness - social media, local efforts, trade shows, etc.
- See things from the Prospect's and Client's eyes - identify pros and cons of using Alpha Five on a typical project.
- Identify how to thwart or minimize above 'cons', exentuate the 'pros'.
- Attitude, attitude, attitude

Facts affecting the environment:

- Prospects are different than Developers. We are Developers; Prospects are those who would take advantage of our services.
- There are a lot more Prospects in the world than Developers!
- There are a lot more non-Alpha Five Developers in the world than Alpha Five Developers.
- There are millions being committed every day on new software development projects!

Think of it this way, if ALL of us worked for the same company as their "software development team" we would have a consistent message both to the prospect/client, and internal amongst ourselves. It is possible to create that environment while still being independent developers. We would still be independent developers, but part of a worldwide team. Think of the worldwide company named Accenture. They employ thousands of contract consultants worldwide. The contract consultants are all "independent" but they all are part of Accenture and deliver a consistent message to prospective clients.

Hi Steve,

Thank you for creating this initial setup for the conference for us!

I can understand you would want to make this conference for ANY developer worldwide, although given the specific nature of the problem we should understand that situations of American and European Alpha developers are quite different. This should stick out in the conference.
As Alpha seems to be well known in the USA, and developers state that they do not have much difficulty in finding any work, the European developer suffers from lack of understanding about Alpha, lack of directed marketing, lack of jobs, lack of almost anything to make a living out of developing in Alpha. So, we have to deal with different circumstances here. Of course, and on the other hand, I hope there might be very positive interaction residing in who knows maybe even something close to a solution.

And although I am with you where you say we need to keep the discussion under a narrow topic, it seems way to early to bring up things like goals and solutions. Those would rather need to be the outcome out of such a conference instead of the starting point?

I guess important questions that would need to get some attention (at least as I see it) would be:

On the "problem" side:
1) The current situation: do you have paid work with Alpha? Can you live from it, or is it providing additional income?
2) Would you consider yourself as a professional developer?
3) What kind of work is it that you do with Alpha, do you develop and sell products, do you work on projects for customers, are you on the payroll of an employer as an Alpha developer?
4) How do you evaluate the amount of work that is available to you?
5) What kind of problems do you encounter that reduces the amount of work you could attract?
6) How do you evaluate the attitude of your customers regarding Alpha Five as a development environment?

On the "solution" side:
1) What have you done to improve your position as an Alpha developer that actually worked out for you?
2) What do you see as points you still need to improve and do you have any ideas on how to achieve that?
3) Listening to the situation of others, do you have any experiences that would solve one or more of those problems for others?

I guess defining the solutions upfront works counterproductive?

I think we will find out, that there are hardly ANY Alpha developers on payroll, most of them will be SOHO users (Small Office or Home Office) that work independently. Furthermore, my impression is only a few of those are able to completely live out of that, for most of those developers it will probably be additional income at best.

In Europe, you can simply have a look at the job vacancies and finding no desire for Alpha Developers will confirm at least half of that assumption to be true here.

[mronck]

Re: The Business End of Alpha Software for independent developers

Certification can and should be done under IADN (see link below). "Certification" has a legal meaning and comes with some implied liability by the certifying entity. A Certification program (USA anyway) requires approval of a governing organization like the Board of Education. Being a good developer is more than passing some programming tests.

This will not work. It has never worked in the past either anywhere.
An organisation formed and created by and financed by developers will at best be serving the interests of developers, not of their clients. Customers know that.
There is really nothing to be gained by the butcher certifying his own meat......

I think at best you could have an organisation that draws up a list of objectives and demands they think a developer should meet, and hand that over to someone or something absolutely (beyond discussion) objective, like a notary.

Anyone applying for a "certificate" (only saying that he meets that list of objectives and demands) should then contact the notary who will decide whether he proved that or not, and supply the certificate.

It might furthermore be a good idea to contact an insurance company to offer (limited) insurance against any "damage" caused by "certified" developers to further enhance security for the customer and things like that (f.i. escrow services etc etc).

Remember, that for .NET programmers there is not such a thing as an "officially certified .NET developer" either..... and nobody asks for it there.
You can follow training and/or other forms of .NET education, and maybe get some certificate from the school that provided that training, but that's it.

If you want to do MORE because you want to improve the situation for Alpha developers, you would want to make it that such a construction offers extra security for the customer, and hence it needs to be objective. The notary may very well be the way to follow, since almost any country has such an institution, and we are not only thinking for the USA here.

With this, I do not say there is no extra value in IADN or similar projects. There is. I doubt however this will mean anything to potential customers who are in doubt.

[Rida Alhasan]

Re: The Business End of Alpha Software for independent developers: Survey

.
Hi Steve,
For the conference, it would be great to have some statistics on Alpha Five applications.
Below is a draft survey on facts that in my humble opinion would be clarifying to know beforehand.
Somebody with a good sales and analytical capabilities could improve the draft survey.
The question would be something of the sort:

"For each application you've developed, could you please tell us:"

COUNTRY
It seems that the situation is different if you are in the US or in Europe. Possibly, because of mentality and culture, even within Europe the adoption of a "non-standard" platform (ie Alpha Five) varies from country to country.

WHEN
Year/month you started developing the application

CLIENT
- Size of company
- Size of the company's development team, approximate
- Activity sector (public/government, health, food, ...)

BUDGET
- US dollar 1000-3000
- US dollar 3000-10.000
- US dollar 10.000-30.000
- ...

PLATFORM
- Desktop (includes LAN)
- Web
- Especifically for smartphone
- Other

TYPE OF WORK OR TYPE OF APPLICATION
- Payroll
- Stock control
- Convert PC database application to web
- ...

YOU
- Are an independent developer
- Are in the company's payroll
- Something else

REFUSALS
In those cases somebody proposed an Alpha Five solution but was turned down:
- Platform that got the job (.Net, Java, PHP, MS-Access, Filemaker ...)
- Application budget
- Reason(s) for not being chosen:

* My proposal was too expensive
* My proposal was too cheap
* They were not at ease with having Alpha Five as a platform
* ...

COMMENTS
Any comments.



I guess this survey thing would take a week or two to gather a meaningful/representative number of data. Maybe we'd discover surprising things that would help us define our target market: company size, sector, app type and so on.



Regards,
Felix
.

[Clipper87]

Re: The Business End of Alpha Software for independent developers

Marcel,

How come a Dutchman doesn't succeed in selling something? :-) We Belgians always tend to think you Dutchmen are so good in selling!

Anyway; I think as Ger pointed out Alpha's playing field is in the SMB, non-profit & small governmental businesss (e.g. municipalities). These environments typically don't care (and they should not if you ask me) about what development tool you are using, at most it would be reassuring to them when you tell them that you use SQL server. All the rest is a non-event; these customers dream of things they can't afford if they had to be developed with .net, php or whatever. That is your competitive edge. Would you really like to do development work for a corporate ? There's no money in it & you'll compete with the whole world. There's a lot of satisfaction in working for SMB's , non-profit & small govt and the money is good too without all the corporate rules & blind staring to "industry standards" In fact Alpha is using industry standards with xBasic being the only exception. The WAS for now may be considered proprietary as well but soon you'll have an IIS plugin.
Look for the niche markets & amaze people what you can do in little time (although not 5 minutes) compared to whoever doing whatever in dotnet or any other development tool.

[cptutrecht]

Re: The Business End of Alpha Software for independent developers: Survey

A few things which comes to my mind.

1. Collaboration is very important and should be organized either locally or (just like now in IADN) international.

I don't see any advantage in an european approach.
If i want to gather with colleagues regularly a 200km radius from the centre of holland (where i live) is far enough.
If i need to outsource or get help the US is closer than France or Spain, unless France or Spain speaks english very wel :-)
I want to outsource or get help at competitive prices i should look to English speaking A5 developers in Eastern europe or India, not in Great Brittain or US.

2. Very different groups are (a) A5 developers who sell theire A5 application(s) versus (b) A5 devellopers who sell themselves (to build software)
They will have different objectives


3. We should get at least contact Alpha about this and see wether they are interested to support local initiatives

[mronck]

Re: The Business End of Alpha Software for independent developers

Marcel,

How come a Dutchman doesn't succeed in selling something? :-) We Belgians always tend to think you Dutchmen are so good in selling!

Maybe that's why a Dutchman came up with this thread in the first place: he wants to sell something and is just creative about getting the selling points on the table

Anyway; I think as Ger pointed out Alpha's playing field is in the SMB, non-profit & small governmental businesss (e.g. municipalities). These environments typically don't care (and they should not if you ask me) about what development tool you are using, at most it would be reassuring to them when you tell them that you use SQL server.

Unfortunately, this is not Belgium overhere . Typically, the Dutch Government uses the Tendersystem for government contracts. They do so under the BOA act (which is "Besluit Aanbestedingsregels voor Overheidsopdrachten). The problem with that is, that any tender inquiry will have set the parameters of the job, including most of the time the addition: .NET in it. That does not create any room for offering a solution in Alpha Five (even if you would be faster, cheaper and what not) since you would not meet the requirements for accepting your offer under the tender. Even more, the Dutch Government uses a set of terms and conditions known as "ARBIT" (meaning: Algemene Rijksvoorwaarden bij IT-Overeenkomsten) that will be of influence on the whole order/agreement.
It simply is not that simple. I personally have not seen ANY Dutch Government Tender yet that allowed freedom of choice of the development environment. Not that I read these tender options on a daily basis, but nevertheless. It is not like: "Hey, can you build me some software? What would it cost and how quickly can you have it ready?".

I hear you say corporate work will bring no money: you are quite wrong there. Bugets are often enormous and Alpha Five not only allows you to do the job way quicker, hence staying will within budget, but also allows for making a very good profit in that budget. If they would only accept it as an environment, which until now they don't.

But honesty demands that I must mention that certification projects (often required in corporate business) like SAS70 require a very well thought-out development- testing- and production platform and ditto release system and development cooperation management systems that is not supported natively by Alpha Five in any way, and you won't find any after market addons or third party products for it as well.

Although part of your comments are very correct and I support that Alpha's playing field is in small business, non profit or niche/specialized markets.

[mronck]

Re: The Business End of Alpha Software for independent developers: Survey

A few things which comes to my mind.

1. Collaboration is very important and should be organized either locally or (just like now in IADN) international.

I don't see any advantage in an european approach.
If i want to gather with colleagues regularly a 200km radius from the centre of holland (where i live) is far enough.
If i need to outsource or get help the US is closer than France or Spain, unless France or Spain speaks english very wel :-)
I want to outsource or get help at competitive prices i should look to English speaking A5 developers in Eastern europe or India, not in Great Brittain or US.

2. Very different groups are (a) A5 developers who sell theire A5 application(s) versus (b) A5 devellopers who sell themselves (to build software)
They will have different objectives


3. We should get at least contact Alpha about this and see wether they are interested to support local initiatives

Again, you make some valid points!

However I would not make this a straight topographically separated thing. We live in the internet age, and as far as discussing with colleagues is concerned, the more important thing is whether someone would work in the same general market circumstances as I do for the value of their input, rather then how far away they are.
Since it seems to be the case that Alpha is not very well integrated in the whole of the European Union, this sort of puts all EU countries in the same ballpark with regards to that. You can see that in the reactions from Felix for instance. He has the same problems and/or encounters similar limitations in his options.

Furthermore, outsourcing CAN be an option but should not be overestimated or seen as the ultimate solution. I have seen Dutch banking institutions abandoning really huge financial investments in offshoring IT projects involving both Russian AND Indian development corporations! And yes, they were top-of-the-bill. Nevertheless, you will experience differences in culture and understanding and because of the sometimes enormous distances time schemes will sometimes prove impossible to be met.

One of the strong arguments in favor of Alpha Five is the speed of development it allows, which should supply leverage to the lower cost of labor from any India based developer who uses .NET for instance. When he does the job in 100 hours at $28 an hour, and you can do it in 45 hours ad $60 an hour, the India based developer will lose his edge on you. In stead, you will have the edge on him if you look at things like overhead cost and time scheduling and so on and on.

[cptutrecht]

Re: The Business End of Alpha Software for independent developers

Marcel, some comments on various post :-)

It simply is not that simple. I personally have not seen ANY Dutch Government Tender yet that allowed freedom of choice of the development environment. Not that I read these tender options on a daily basis, but nevertheless. It is not like: "Hey, can you build me some software? What would it cost and how quickly can you have it ready?".
......................
Although part of your comments are very correct and I support that Alpha's playing field is in small business, non profit or niche/specialized market

That is the reason i don't do tenders! As an A5 develloper choose the market where you can compete: create irrisistable applications for a market and sell them. If you have no idea what product? Find a launching customer at a interesting niche and build at your own risk an application you can sell many times. Web devellopment makes this much more lucrative dan desktop devellopment.

I would like most to have contacts with A5 developers who feel at home in this type of business. Distance makes here a difference because an app for say real estate management in Germany is something totally different than in Holland en perhaps also in Spain or France or even Belgium. Market approach also.

Furthermore, outsourcing CAN be an option but should not be overestimated or seen as the ultimate solution. I have seen Dutch banking institutions abandoning really huge financial investments in offshoring IT projects involving both Russian AND Indian development corporations! And yes, they were top-of-the-bill. Nevertheless, you will experience differences in culture and understanding and because of the sometimes enormous distances time schemes will sometimes prove impossible to be met.

One of the strong arguments in favor of Alpha Five is the speed of development it allows, which should supply leverage to the lower cost of labor from any India based developer who uses .NET for instance. When he does the job in 100 hours at $28 an hour, and you can do it in 45 hours ad $60 an hour, the India based developer will lose his edge on you. In stead, you will have the edge on him if you look at things like overhead cost and time scheduling and so on and on.

We, even being a small company, have ample first hand experience in outsourcing to eastern europe (hardly any time difference!) and know a lot about pro's and con's. Wasn't comparing .net in india / russia versus A5 in Europe. But A5 in russia / india versus A5 in Europe. Try to calculate the difference then. Only problem find those guys or girls :-). Here could be a nice challenge for a bunch of local (dutch?) developers to set up such a thing. And use it for creating great products for selling of the shelf (or online) to customers. Totally different market than trying to sell yourself as developer or doing 100% bespoke work for 1 customer. But perfect for a tool like alpha, because in this market you have the say about the tools to be used!

Bottom line: choose your market and don't wait for the market to choose you!

[mronck]

Re: The Business End of Alpha Software for independent developers

Bottom line: choose your market and don't wait for the market to choose you!

Yes, that is definitely a statement that is true. I second that.

What you just said is something I have done for ages already: creating software for niche branches and selling it from the shelve.
Most of those applications were specialized business management applications, but I also once created an accounting application for general use, and a rather sophisticated application for risk management. It varies. All in Alpha Five.

That kind of business however tends to bring a whole new set of problems in comparison with for instance working for an employer or on a project for a customer, where you would have your customer lined out for you upfront. I find that marketing the software is mostly the problem especially if you want to sell global. Just a website and a web store ain't gonna cut it no more. It seems Alpha itself suffers from the same problem.

I have always hoped there would stand up some business alike Digital River, but then one that would not only simply sell the software to the customer who "rings the bell" but also market and promote your software and not just by putting it on some kind of "list". I think there are many developers who want to develop, not sell, who would be delighted to outsource that whole task against a percentage. And there the remarks from Dave chime in. Not all developers have the financial power, knowledge, skills, means or network to promote software globally. Most haven't. And so many valuable ideas and software products remain on the shelve and isn't sold in the end.

[jkwrpc]

Re: The Business End of Alpha Software for independent developers

I am a small shop, one developer - myself, trying to re-build a business that suffered during the economic downturn. Its been difficult. I have a targeted niche and I am trying to build a customer base by having an off the shelf solution for one of my targeted customers business processes. This is my risk, but in the end I need my application to be as bullet proof as possible. Hopefully that will serve as a proof of concept as to my work and the platform.

Through the forum I developed a close working relationship with a colleague in the UK. We are able to video conference and move development work back and forth. He has been a great source of ideas, problem solutions, and just plain in encouragement.

But even with that level of support, and the help of the other forum members, as I near the launch of the product I know I need to get this as close to right as I can. I am not a salesman, truth be told I am bit of an introvert. That just means my skills aren't in sales; someone like Dave M. would have run me off the lot the first day.

So, I am not a salesperson, I work with a development platform that is not mainstream within the larger IT community, I need to insure my product made in the lesser known platform is well made and market it. I need some help getting there and I know I can learn from others who have traveled this road.

I suspect whether you are in Europe or anywhere else there will be core issues we share. For some, it might be how to bid a contract, it might be encouraging Alpha Software to consider naming a next release AlphaFive.Net. (That may be a brilliant marketing ploy for Alpha and us.) Greater minds than mine can work that issue out.

I would suggest starting with a meeting to do two things, one is to develop a larger list of topics, the second would be see what if any resources has for A5 developers to help market their wares. Perhaps someone from Alpha could deliver a presentation on that. I would think once we know what is of interest and what if any resources Alpha can help us with, we have the final list of topics that could be addressed over the coming weeks or months.

[Peter.Greulich]

Re: The Business End of Alpha Software for independent developers

I think we will find out, that there are hardly ANY Alpha developers on payroll, most of them will be SOHO users (Small Office or Home Office) that work independently.

That really describes 90% or maybe 98% of A5 developers. No one has ever asked me if I use NET. Some clients do ask if they should use dbf or SQL or maybe they specify that they want SQL - even if they are not entirely sure why. I think Frank's post #36 is right on target, although I can appreciate Marcel's situation. The European situation may be quite different that here in the states.

[Bigmac57]

Re: The Business End of Alpha Software for independent developers

Steve,

I'm fairly new to Alpha, but count me in if I can help in any way. Thank you for your efforts on behalf of all of us.

Robert Butterfield

[bea2701]

Re: The Business End of Alpha Software for independent developers

--