Smalltalk Digest: March Edition
Welcome to the March 2019 edition of the Cincom Smalltalk™ Digest. In this value-packed edition, we will:
- Talk about Cincom’s founder and CEO being featured as a powerful business leader
- Reintroduce BPM and discuss how it can help business leaders make smarter choices
- Show how Cincom Smalltalk can be used with SAP
- Explain how customers can easily get access to the Resolutions Newsletter
- Demo the Cincom® ObjectStudio® Next Generation User Interface
- Look at the upcoming 2019 ESUG and Smalltalks Conferences, as well as Camp Smalltalk North America … and much more!
Cincom Founder and CEO Featured as One of the 300 Most Powerful Business Leaders in Cincinnati
Cincom founder and CEO, Thomas M. Nies, was recently featured as one of the 300 most power business leaders in Cincinnati. This special edition, which was produced by the publishers of Cincinnati Magazine, marks the publication’s first venture at ranking successful business leaders within the community.
According to Cincinnati Magazine’s Editor-in-Chief, John Fox, “Given the growth in business activity and influence, it wasn’t difficult to identify 300 power business leaders to feature in this inaugural Cincinnati 300 publication. The real challenge came in limiting our scope to 300.”
You can find the biography on Mr. Nies on page 57, and page 50 shows a full-page ad that features a special “thank you” to Cincinnati for 50 great years.
- To view the Cincinnati 300 publication, click here.
What Is BPM and How Can It Help Me Make Smarter Choices for My Business?
Last month, we talked about how business leaders struggle with risk and how they can lower their risk by using Cincom Smalltalk. We also talked about using the 3X Methodology to help them succeed further in their planning. This month, we want to look at the process of understanding all of their business processes.
Where It All Began
The task of understanding and defining business processes is not a new concept. In fact, nearly eight years ago, we introduced a subject on our website called Business Process Analysis (BPA). BPA used to be considered as simply analyzing an organization’s current processes and designing a concept of it through a modeling tool, like the modeling tool in Cincom ObjectStudio. The goal of this concept was to deliver a working model of the necessary features for the benefit of IT personnel, since IT was where the proper system was created, tested and implemented to automate these processes.
- To see a demo of this using Cincom ObjectStudio, click here.
In recent years, this predominate IT focus of BPA shifted to encompass the business user’s broader understanding and perspective of the overall business, shifting from the term Business Process Analysis (BPA) to Business Process Management (BPM). However, just a few short years ago, the concept of BPM was considered to be at a crossroads and was struggling to remain relevant due to how fast technology and business innovation was growing. But analysts were encouraged and positive that this struggle would change.
In fact, in 2016, Forrester forecasted that BPM would continue to be a dominant and important force in the drive toward automation, collaboration and engagement. Forrester also predicted that as part of this drive, BPM practitioners would rapidly shift to a digital business transformation rather than focusing on business process transformation programs. Forrester went on to predict a strengthening in AD&D leaders’ investments and roadmaps as they strive for leaner BPM programs and software programs.
Fast-forward to the present, and Forrester’s three-year forecast holds true. Business leaders have indeed shifted their focus to improving their customer experience through digital business transformation. Forrester now claims:
“Organizations’ primary process attention has turned to enabling digital transformation, increasing the need for process agility and a broader landscape of process technologies and features.”
How Can Cincom Smalltalk Help Me with BPM?
As the need for process agility and digital transformation increases, Cincom Smalltalk is helping business users through various services and programs we offer our customers and partners. To learn more about what Cincom Smalltalk Services Partners offer, click here.
Can Cincom Smalltalk Be Used with SAP?
SAP is an enterprise resource planning (ERP) software developed by the German company, SAP SE. SAP ERP incorporates the key business functions of an organization, which helps with business process management.
One of the many benefits of using Cincom Smalltalk for application development is the fact that it works so well with many other development environments. In fact, we like to say that Cincom Smalltalk “plays well with others” and have even listed several examples on our website, including Raspberry Pi and JavaScript. Another example of this “playing nice” is how Cincom Smalltalk can be used with SAP. Using an application written by a Cincom Smalltalk partner called, SAP NetWeaver Connect, SAP and Cincom Smalltalk work well together for a variety of uses.
For example, existing Cincom Smalltalk customers who have SAP requirements, as well as prospects looking for a solution that can work with SAP, can use Cincom Smalltalk and SAP NetWeaver Connect.
What Is SAP NetWeaver Connect for Cincom Smalltalk?
Let’s take a quick look at SAP NetWeaver Connect. SAP NetWeaver Connect enables SAP to use Smalltalk for explorative modeling while allowing companies with SAP requirements to profit from advantages of Smalltalk with an easy and standard way of integration into SAP projects. Smalltalk’s strengths, such as modeling and rapid prototyping, are easily accessible at SAP. This helps in two ways:
- SAP customers can choose to do their functional enhancements with Cincom® VisualWorks®.
- SAP partners can close white spaces in SAP’s Business Application Map with certifiable applications created with VisualWorks.
SAP NetWeaver Connect makes Cincom VisualWorks a “first-class citizen” in the SAP NetWeaver world.
- More detailed information about SAP NetWeaver Connect can be found here.
How about a Real-World Example?
Recently, Suzanne Fortman, the Program Director and Engineering Manager for Cincom Smalltalk, shared a story about a customer meeting at the Cincom Corporate Headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio.
This existing customer had been using Cincom Smalltalk for years and had five different applications written in Smalltalk. They had recently acquired another company and integrated a new team of Java programmers with their Smalltalk programming team. After the acquisition, their executive team gave both teams a challenge for building out a new solution. The requirement? Both the Smalltalk and Java development teams had to show a proof of concept and it had to connect with SAP.
Since the STAR Team had a great relationship with this customer, they immediately called us to ask what we knew about SAP. We were able to introduce them to the SAP NetWeaver Connect application we described above. Since the SAP NetWeaver Connect application was written by one of our Cincom Smalltalk partners, we were able to ease the customer’s mind because we have an existing solution that can meet their SAP needs. The Java team, on the other hand, did not have the same shortcut to deliver the proof of concept to management with the SAP requirement.
- Listen as Suzanne goes into detail telling this story here:
What Is the Cincom Smalltalk Resolutions Newsletter and Why Is It a Valuable Tool for Customers?
In recent months, we highlighted the value of Cincom SupportWeb® for Cincom Smalltalk customers. Today, we want to highlight the value of the Cincom Smalltalk Resolutions Newsletter. The Resolutions Newsletter is another benefit of being a Cincom Smalltalk customer and was created to be a useful tool in making it easier to do business with Cincom.
In this monthly newsletter, customers will find things like:
- The latest Hidden Gems screencast
- Featured Cincom Smalltalk programs
- Upcoming activities and Smalltalk events
However, the most important reason we publish the Cincom Smalltalk Resolutions Newsletter is to let customers know what’s going on with the product since the last release so they can see what resolutions might be available to them.
If you are a current Cincom Smalltalk customer and are interested in receiving the Resolutions Newsletter, simply fill out the form on this page. Be sure to include your customer number, as only current Cincom Smalltalk customers have access to the Resolutions email.
Hear more about the Resolutions Newsletter from Kimberly Thomas, the Director, Global Product Support, here:
Hidden Gems: ObjectStudio’s Next Generation User Interface
The purpose of the Hidden Gems Screencast is to give developers who use Cincom Smalltalk some valuable insight into the useful abilities of the products that may not be obvious. This Hidden Gems is about getting started with the “Next Generation User interface” (NGUI), which is used in Cincom ObjectStudio.
Cincom ObjectStudio, better known as the “business person’s thinking tool,” provides a robust development environment, which is necessary to create innovative applications that capture complex business models and processes.
Cincom ObjectStudio has always been a native Windows UI, meaning the widgets are native Microsoft widgets. ObjectStudio’s NGUI lets you get the most out of Microsoft’s UI widgets, giving you more fine-grained access, control and flexibility for your applications.
This screencast demonstrates a basic example (hello world), then shows you where to find more examples that you can reuse for your applications.
Watch this Hidden Gems below or by clicking here.
ESUG 2019 Date and Location Announced
Smalltalk users from around the world will be coming to Cologne, Germany to attend ESUG 2019. German software development company, ZWEIDENKER, will be hosting the conference, which will take place on August 26-30.
The address of the conference venue (Stadtgarten) is:
Venloer Strasse 40, 50672 Köln/Germany
As soon as more information regarding hotel accommodations and how to make reservations develops, we will be sure to pass it along.
About ESUG
ESUG (European Smalltalk User Group) is a non-profit association that gathers European users of all Smalltalk dialects. With goals of promoting the use of the Smalltalk programming language and communication between Smalltalk users, the association also helps in creating and linking Smalltalk user groups and representing Smalltalk users in discussions with vendors.
This is the 27th ESUG Conference, and it promises to be one of the best in its successful history.
We hope to see you there!
Smalltalks Conference Date and Location Announced
Hi everyone!
This year the Smalltalks conference will be held at Facultad de Informática, Universidad Nacional del Comahue, Neuquén.
Main event: November 13 to 15.
Workshops, tutorials and introductory talks: November 11 and 12.#Smalltalks19— F.A.S.T. (@fast_arg) March 18, 2019
The 2019 Smalltalks Conference will be held at Facultad de Informática, Universidad Nacional del Comahue, in the Neuquén province of Argentina. The workshops, tutorials and introductory talks will take place on November 11-12, and the main event will follow on November 13-15.
This is the 13th year for the conference that focuses on Smalltalk-based technologies, research and industry applications.
The 2019 Smalltalks Conference and FAST
The Smalltalks Conference is one of the activities that is organized by FAST (Fundación Argentina de Smalltalk), which is an Argentinian non-profit foundation. With a mission to promote the use of Smalltalk in all areas regarding education, scientific research and professional development, FAST seeks to connect Argentina and the region with the international Smalltalk community.
A Unique and Free Opportunity
The 2019 Smalltalks conference is free and provides a unique opportunity for showing advancements and new projects that are taking place in the global Smalltalk community. This is also a great opportunity for young developers to acquire experience in presenting their work before an international audience.
We look forward to seeing you at Smalltalks 2019!
Calling All Smalltalk Enthusiasts in North America!
Interested in Smalltalk on IoT devices, programming language design or tooling? What about Smalltalk on web frameworks, virtual machine implementations and data processing applications?
If you’ve never heard of Camp Smalltalk or have never had the chance to attend one, it’s your opportunity to meet and engage with a passionate community of folks interested in Smalltalk programming. Camp Smalltalk is an open community that enjoys sharing ideas and listening to new ones … and everyone is welcome!
We encourage you to follow Camp Smalltalk North America on their two social accounts:
- Camp Smalltalk North America Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/campsmalltalkna/
- Camp Smalltalk North America Twitter – https://twitter.com/CampSmalltalkNA
More Opportunities to Network with Smalltalkers and Programmers in 2019
In addition to the FAST conference and Camp Smalltalk North America mentioned above, there are other opportunities to meet with Smalltalkers and programmers from around the world. Upcoming networking and learning opportunities include:
- March 29-31, 2019 — Camp Smalltalk Charlotte 2019 (Charlotte, North Carolina)
- April 1-4, 2019 — ‹Programming› 2019 (Genova, Italy)
- April 3, 2019 — CharmCityJs Meeting (Baltimore, Maryland)
- April 8-12, 2019 — 34th ACM/SIGAPP Symposium On Applied Computing (Limassol, Cyprus)
- April 29-May 1, 2019 — deliver:Agile 2019 (Nashville, Tennessee)
- May 1, 2019 — CharmCityJs Meeting (Baltimore, Maryland)
- May 21-25, 2019 — XP 2019: 20th International Conference on Agile Software and Systems Development (Montreal, QC, Canada)
Helpful Customer Links and Information
Our Customer Portal has links to all the important information our partners and customers need. Here’s a quick guide:
- Customer Product Request Form – For customers and partners with a valid customer number.
- Cincom Smalltalk Resolutions Newsletter Request Form
- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
- Cincom Professional Services – Get more information on product upgrades, mentoring, troubleshooting, performance enhancements, migrations and more.
- Customer Support
- Education Services
Popular Product Resources
Here’s a quick guide to the popular resources we have available on our website: