COMDEX was the big story last fall and BASIS sent several people to check out the latest and greatest technology. In this issue, Kevin King, BASIS Vice President of Engineering, reports back with his impressions of the trends, and Jane McKenzie, BASIS Vice President of Sales and Marketing, reports on an international selling symposium she attended and its relevance to the Business Basic community. Also, BASIS Chief Technical Officer, John Schroeder, talks about the on-site training class he taught at DISC, a company specializing in distribution systems software.

E-COMDEX
The Internet changes everything! This was the message everywhere I turned. If COMDEX organizers were to follow the trend of their exhibitors, they would have already changed the name to reflect the latest trends in technology marketing. E-COMDEX, I-COMDEX, or COMD@X are the kinds of nomenclature changes sweeping the marketing of technology today.

E-commerce is currently driving the Internet to its ubiquitous position. While the cute Internet-centric twists to company and product names is interesting, the ability to conduct business anywhere and everywhere is the motivation that lasts. Most of the exhibitors demonstrated their products with an emphasis on "how it could be used on or over the Internet." The most telling indicator, however, of the value of the Internet was the fact that all of the major vendors themselves had Internet connectivity to home offices around the world. If you made a purchase or requested in-depth information, the vendor would invariably turn to a machine and place the order through the Internet. The next time you stopped at one of the thousand public Internet-access stations, you could read the confirmation notice that had already been sent from the vendor's home office. If you saw something that might be interesting to a client or colleague, you could send the information to him or her electronically before leaving the booth.

As the world evolves into a technologically complicated marvel managed more by machines than people, the need for technical support grows exponentially. E-support has sprung from this demand. At COMDEX, there were companies who specialized in 24-hour, seven-days-a-week, Web site support. These support people would come to the aid of anyone who was having trouble finding his or her way through a complicated Web site. With simply a click of the Help button on any site that the e-support team was monitoring, the lost Web surfer could request a phone call or e-mail to help them successfully navigate the site.

With all of the Internet hype, it is important to look for efficient ways to use this wonderful tool. E-portal applications are beginning to gain favor in the technical community as a more efficient way of doing business and providing productivity tools. Two industry giants, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems are launching Office Suite Portal Applications. Portal applications are installed on Application Service Providers (ASPs). These types of applications enable the Internet users to have access to the most current version of their favorite software without purchasing it. The ASP handles all of the installation, configuration and maintenance issues, and users have access to a wider variety of modern applications than they have ever been able to afford in the past, with nothing more complicated than a single mouse click. Imagine how quickly one would gain worldwide market share once one developed a popular portal application that anyone with an Internet connection could use and enjoy. Any aggressive, forward-thinking, Business Basic programmer could take our next generation product, BBj™, and create the hottest new portal application to take the Internet by storm.

BASIS is continually watching the direction of the larger computer industry and searching for ways to help Business Basic developers keep in step. At COMDEX, the direction was clear: e-business and the Internet. Our own Internet efforts have involved providing download versions of all BASIS products; demo and permanent product licenses; product and technical support documentation; business, marketing and sales information; and BASIS shows and conference registration. This year, we are adding e-commerce capabilities to our site. And there will be more. This is clearly the future of business and therefore of Business Basic also.

-Kevin King

Scoping Out Latin American Opportunities at COMDEX
COMDEX was a world of shows and more. Among all the booths, sales pitches and speeches, there was a wealth of learning opportunities. I took advantage of one of those opportunities and attended International Data Corporation's (IDC) Symposium on Global Information Technology (IT). Of particular interest to BASIS this year is Latin America.

The software business potential in this area of the world is astounding. Although in 1999, Latin America-comprising Mexico, the Caribbean, Central and South America-accounted for only 3.5 percent of global IT spending, IDC predicts that number to rise in 2000 to 12.9 percent, which represents a 400-percent growth rate.

Much like companies in the United States, the software market drivers are based on business priorities that include:

• Improving organizational efficiency
• Improving customer care
• Mining existing markets

Businesses in Latin America are looking to increase margins through greater efficiency and more carefully cultivating existing customer relationships. Add in "develop new markets" and this maps to BASIS' own Marketing and Sales strategies for 2000.

But what makes this so exciting for Business Basic developers is that right now there are no clear winners in developing enterprise application software to handle Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) or Customer Relationship Management (CRM). This is an open market. Resulting from this, and equally exciting, is the fact that most companies' applications are built internally rather than buying packaged software. IDC reports that 85 percent of all VARs in Latin America say they're selling multiple products and offering a complete solution.

Latin American IT Spending By Products
	Services	35%
	PCs/Workstations	24%
	Software	13%
	Systems	12%
	Add-Ons	8%
	Data Comm	8%
Latin American IT Spending By Coutry
	Brazil	43%
	Mexico	18%
	Argentia	12%
	Venezuela	5%
	Colombia	5%
	Chile	4%
	Rest of Latin America	13%
	(of which El Salvado is 30%, Peru is 22% and Puerto Rico is 18%)

Along with building and selling complete solutions comes providing services. IDC reports that services represented 37 percent of the total IT budget globally while software represented 18.8 percent. We can see this trend happening in the United States. Latin America will follow. Clearly, the opportunities for providing both software and services to companies in Latin America are abundant.

What about the Internet? Worldwide, 58 percent of all PCs have Internet access. In the United States, this figure is 75 percent. According to IDC, this figure varies throughout Latin America from a high of 23 percent in Mexico, to 19 percent in Argentina, to a low of 3 percent in Brazil.

The lack of infrastructure, regional and local portals, and native-language content on Web sites in addition to cost are all obstacles to Internet user growth in Latin America. Despite these obstacles, however, IDC projects Internet use to grow in this part of the world at a rate of 32 percent per year through 2003. And according to IDC, although only 11 percent of all Latin American companies have deployed an e-commerce solution, 90 percent of them want one. Many smaller companies in Latin America perceive e-commerce as the low-cost arena in which they can compete with larger companies.

I see opportunities for growth throughout Latin America and not just for BASIS but for our partners too. Right now at BASIS, we have the ability to bring Business Basic solution providers together with existing markets in Latin America through our network of distributors and Latin American partners. Further down the road, we may have opportunities to develop with our partners new solutions geared to expanding these markets.

-Jane McKenzie

GUI Training On Location
As part of BASIS' efforts to assist major customers in their move to GUI and in BBj™ browser-enabled applications, I visited Distributor Information Systems Corporation (DISC) in Farmington, Connecticut. I spent two days training several DISC developers on the BASIS GUI tools, GUIBuilder™ and ResBuilder™.

The class I taught is designed for Business Basic developers who need to get up to speed on the BASIS GUI tools. In it, I use a sample program called the Chile Company Masterfile Maintenance program, which ships on our Advantage CD, as a guide. The class takes the student through the definition of screen elements in ResBuilder and the use of GUIBuilder to write the event-handling code to build an application.

John Pearse, President of DISC, sat in on the first day of the class and provided a very useful point of view for the students by relating the class topics to the DISC system.

The students were very enthusiastic and accomplished a lot, progressing from "Hello World" through forms that used tab controls and data-aware grid controls. The exercises are designed to build on one another and prepare the student in the areas of GUI application design and the writing of event-driven code, and the DISC students handled them all well. As each exercise was completed, the students were directed to the Chile Company program to see how the exercise was related to an actual GUI program.

BASIS is actively supporting customers who want to go GUI. With both our training classes and associations with vendors in the field, such as SCS Consulting Services, BASIS can support you in your move to GUI. If you're interested in having BASIS hold a GUI training class at your company's location, e-mail BASIS at info@basis.com.

-John Schroeder