Progress ups front-end & back-end developer tools
Progress has (logically enough) filled its week with a bushel of product announcements to coincide with its NEXT 2018 conference, which was staged this month in Boston, Massachusetts.
Among the platform and tools updated at this time is the release of Progress Sitefinity 11.
This is a software that is described as a ‘web experience management’ product aimed at both developers and marketing staff.
It’s that thing the industry likes to call personalised adaptive web experiences. In other words, it’s a toolset with a visual interface featuring a good quantity of one-click deployment that will actually impact backend web applications and how they are presented.
“To be successful, organizations must deliver personalised content, matching the end user’s needs and preferences. This is possible only through a powerful, flexible solution that enables the quick launch of campaigns with the ability to iterate in real-time,” said John Ainsworth, senior vice president of core products at Progress.
For the marketing types
This is a re-designed content creation and management interface aligned for use by multiple individuals within the content creation process.
The software is also tuned for multi-channel experiences and it employs a degree of AI and machine learning to elevate experiences and drive lead conversion. It all comes in a ‘desktop-like experience’.
For the developers
There is one-click cloud deployment, essentially automating lower-level tasks. Plus also tools to help developers with the creation of MVC based digital experiences. There’s also a modernised, Angular-based admin panel facilitating simplified customization and integration API services, such as artificial intelligence or machine learning.
Progress says that with capabilities like personalisation, multisite management, behavior tracking, audience segmentation and marketing attribution, the Sitefinity solution enables organisations to deliver more effective web experiences.
Today, Sitefinity powers 10,000 enterprise websites worldwide across various industries.
Progress OpenEdge
Also in the product update pack is an update to Progress Application Server (PAS) for OpenEdge.
OpenEdge itself is an application development environment comprised of elements including the above-mentioned application server, an authentication gateway, business process management (BPM) and business rules tooling, plus also data management and database monitoring capabilities.
Progress says that its application server is designed for cloud-first deployments and helps developers evolve complex mission-critical business applications , while limiting security vulnerabilities and easing installation, configuration and management.
Built on Apache Tomcat, PAS for OpenEdge allows application developers to extend APIs and use an existing OpenEdge Advanced Business Language (ABL) codebase to provide new functionality.
“The trend from monolithic to services-based architectures, as well as continuous delivery deployment models, require flexibility and reliability like never before. Users expect applications to always be up-to-date with the latest functionality, requiring no downtime, yet remaining secure and compliant at all times,” said John Ainsworth, SVP, core products, Progress. “Progress Application Server for OpenEdge brings developers the extensibility and scalability required for today’s business environment by providing the cloud-ready services needed to optimize operations and reduce management costs in a secure and reliable environment.”
Essentially this software allows customers to consolidate their business logic into one location creating a more maintainable code base.
PAS for OpenEdge server includes:
- Simplicity: Built on the Apache Tomcat web server framework, PAS for OpenEdge server is installed, configured and monitored as a web server that supports HTML-based frontends for users of OpenEdge applications.
- Security: With Spring Security Framework included, PAS for OpenEdge server was designed on industry standards for secure operation, ensuring trusted identity management by hardening the overall security of the OpenEdge application environment. The Spring Security Framework is also available in OpenEdge 11.7 and is the foundation for the OpenEdge Authentication Gateway.
- Cloud-Ready: Provides a scalable, cloud-ready server to optimize operations and reduce management costs. PAS for OpenEdge server also unifies all Progress OpenEdge solution offerings into a single application server technology, providing developers with a familiar programming model, increased communications, simple and consistent installations and easier management of the application lifecycle.
- ABL Development and Deployment: Specifically tailored to support ABL application development and deployment environments, PAS for OpenEdge server is designed to use significantly fewer system resources than the original OpenEdge AppServer, in turn enhancing scalability and performance of business applications.