Market Position Overview
Fluidapps is positioned in the software development market as the ultimate solution to the development of enterprise applications by providing a simplified, flexible and powerful development and deployment platform.
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The Gap in the Market
Since the inception of the spreadsheet, there has been a significant gap between the spreadsheet and development tools. Fluidapps Fills the Gap between Spreadsheets and Development Tools.
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Monolithic Applications
The enterprise software industry is currently ruled by rigid monolithic applications. The technology behind Fluidapps will set a course towards small and flexible enterprise applications.
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What Makes a Killer App
Over the past 30 years, there have been several successful “killer apps”. These “Killer apps” share common characteristics. Fluidapps has the same characteristics.
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Value Proposition and ROI
Fluidapps will provide an impressive value proposition and ROI in the industry with a design to deliver simplicity, consistency, flexibility and the power to deliver robust enterprise applications.
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Market Frustrations
User frustrations within the enterprise software market are on the rise. Applications have become too big, too complicated, too rigid and way too expensive. Companies are getting crushed under the weight of these applications.
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No Equal in the Market
The enterprise software industry is a $50 billion market with a large variety of software development methods to address the market demands. Unfortunately, all of these methods do not address the primary problems. The patented technology behind Fluidapps is positioned to address these problems.
The Gap in the Market

Since the inception of the spreadsheet, there has been a significant gap between the spreadsheet and development tools. Users love the simplicity and ease of spreadsheets; whereas developers love the flexibility and power of programming tools. The gap has been a wearisome battleground between users and software developers. A huge opportunity has existed for over three decades.
When it comes to automating a business activity, there are only three options. First, find an off-the-shelf, pre-developed, rigid application which might come close to your business needs. Second, hire a team of software developers with years of education and experience, and commence developing a custom application. Or, third, use a spreadsheet. The first two options are daunting because of the cost, effort and risk involved. And, spreadsheets have serious limitations. The gap is huge between using a spreadsheet or selecting either an off-the-shelf application or developing one. This is why so many businesses try to use spreadsheets to address specific business activities — because no other product is available when it comes to providing immediate results with little effort.
A spreadsheet is a neat little suitcase of forms and data. It’s simple, intuitive and productive. The spreadsheet is productive because the user can perform nearly all activities in a single environment. A user can set up a simple application immediately with little or no education, and later add more depth and functionality as knowledge expands. It is an excellent tool for the learn-as-you-go approach. This is why the spreadsheet continues to rule the day in nearly all companies, from the smallest to the largest corporations. The spreadsheet is king.
However, as most know, the spreadsheet has serious limitations and problems. To name a few:
- The number of columns and records are limited.
- There is only one way to view records (or rows).
- You cannot toggle between multiple records and a single record layout for a specific row.
- You cannot define hierarchical data where a child record relates to a parent record.
- You cannot group columns together.
- You cannot collapse or expand groups of columns.
- Column labels must be manually created and managed.
- Automatic functions like subtotals, averaging, counts, etc., are limited.
- Data validation, control and security are also limited.
- Data is not stored in a central repository like a relational database. Therefore, data cannot be accessed and edited by more than one user at a time.
- A spreadsheet is an island of data to itself, and exposes companies to a decentralized and fragmented data environment.
There have been many attempts by several products to fill the gap between spreadsheets and development tools. Each attempt has ended in failure; either the product had limited functionality or the development environment was too complicated. The gap between spreadsheets and development tools still remains wide open, which is why the business community still prefers spreadsheets to address immediate business needs – there are no other options.
Fluidapps was specifically designed to fill the gap between spreadsheets and development tools. It has the simple, intuitive and productive environment of spreadsheets, but has the power and depth of development tools. Fluidapps avoids the pitfalls of the past with an elegant combination of intuitive navigation and development depth for robust applications. Users with few technical skills can become productive immediately by defining columns within data views and adding sophistication and depth later as knowledge of the product increases.
Monolithic Applications

The primary approach for enterprise software development today is the writing of code – a lot of code. Code must be written for every form, process, inquiry and report. Enterprise applications start out small and over time, turn into what is called “Monolithic Applications,” with millions of lines of code (sometimes referred to as bloatware). Companies are crushed under the weight of these applications because they are big, complicated and rigid. Fluidapps is the first enterprise application positioned to reduce the size and complexity of enterprise software, with a simple design, small footprint, and incredible flexibility.
Monolithic applications are large, complicated, inconsistent and rigid software products containing thousands of interdependent programs, usually written in multiple languages and utilizing multiple layers of technology. These applications are a major source of frustration in the business community, causing serious concerns with poor quality, excessive purchasing costs and high implementation and maintenance costs. The enterprise software industry is reaching critical mass with its customers, where the costs to purchase, modify, implement and maintain these applications far exceed the benefits.
The problem with monolithic applications is the traditional method of software development. This method matches one or more packets of code to each and every business process. Since there are thousands of standard business processes, with varying nuances for every type of business, the results are massive and complicated heaps of computer code with thousands of packets of code. Since the number of business processes increases daily, so does the size and complexity of these applications. The industry needs a fresh new approach to enterprise application development.
The solution is to simplify enterprise software by shrinking the size of applications and providing intuitive and consistent navigation, along with incredible flexibility. A solution to the problem commenced in the late 1990s. After several years of design, the solution was finally reached through the use of an innovative software technology called “Singular Polymorphic Software” (SPS). SPS technology became the basis of the Fluidapps product.
Singular polymorphic software (SPS) technology uses a single device called the “Universal Data View”, residing on the client, and capable of addressing all development and business activities. SPS technology eliminates the need to match a packet of code for each business process. The universal data view is used for all data maintenance, inquiry and reporting activities. This will significantly simplify and reduce the size and complexity of enterprise applications, while providing an intuitive and consistent environment. In addition, SPS technology is extremely flexible. The ease and speed of change will be addictive to users. SPS technology spells the beginning of the end of monolithic applications.
What Makes a Killer App

Over the past 30 years, there have been several successful “killer apps” in the software industry. These include such software applications as spreadsheets, word processors, authoring tools, graphic tools and browsers. Each of these killer applications shares a common set of characteristics.
Listed below are the four common characteristics of all killer apps:
1. Satisfies a Critical Need: The application satisfies a critical need in the industry.
2. Single Environment: All user activities are contained in a single environment.
3. User-Friendly: The navigation of the application is simple, intuitive and consistent.
4. High Data Visibility: The application provides a high degree of data visibility.
Fluidapps has been designed and positioned as a contender for the next killer app. The reason why is because the positioning and design of the application squarely addresses each of the four characteristics of killer applications.
First, Fluidapps satisfies one of the largest gaps in the software industry. That is, the gap between spreadsheets and development tools. If there is a unique activity that needs to be automated, users have only two options: use an application development tool which takes years of education and experience, or use a spreadsheet. In an attempt to avoid developing a software application with a complicated development tool, users will often turn spreadsheets in order to develop an application, but with minimal success. Fluidapps has the look and feel of a spreadsheet with the power and depth of a development tool.
Second, Fluidapps is designed to contain all development and end-user activities in a single environment. Both development and application execution are all combined in this environment. A device called the “Universal Data View” has been designed to handle nearly all development and business activities. This single device combined with the patented back-end technology provides the power behind Fluidapps.
Third, The Fluidapps navigation environment is simple, intuitive and brutally consistent. A user with little or no experience can be productive immediately.
Fourth, Fluidapps provides high data visibility with the ability to toggle and zoom to a single record. The level of data visibility will rival spreadsheets with the ability to change fonts, number of records and the size of the data view. On top of this, Fluidapps is totally relational, with the ability to naturally zoom to any related data from any point in the application where a relationship might exist.
The conclusion – Fluidapps is the next killer app.
Value Proposition and ROI

Fluidapps is designed to simplify and reduce the size and complexity of software applications with the most flexible design in the enterprise software industry. This will provide an impressive value proposition and return on investment (ROI) within the enterprise application market.
The complaints about enterprise software applications have been increasing for years. Enterprise software has become large, complicated, rigid and expensive to purchase, learn, implement and maintain. The IT budget for most companies has gone from 5% to over 20% in the last 20 years. Companies are getting crushed under the weight of software and technology.
The solution is to significantly simplify and reduce the size, complexity and rigidness of enterprise software. These are the primary objectives behind the design of Fluidapps.
The following is a list of the leading value propositions provided by Fluidapps. These value propositions will deliver a significant return on investment (ROI):
- Reduction in system and management requirements: Fluidapps reduces the size and complexity of business applications by eliminating the need to create volumes of complicated code. Fluidapps will have the smallest software footprint in the industry. All of the data view definitions, business logic and enterprise data will be stored within one or more databases. Less code translates into less system resources, operation and maintenance overhead.
- Real productivity: Fluidapps has a combined and seamless development and deployment environment. Because all data views are derived from the same device, the navigation is brutally consistent for all development and business activities. The navigation is simple to learn, and naturally relational. Simplicity, consistency and a powerful relational environment all translates into a significant amount of productivity. Productivity translates into lower costs to learn, implement and maintain.
- Rapid automation of business processes: Fluidapps will provide a 1000% improvement to enterprise automation. A simple two-step process is all that is required to develop an application data view. This translates into rapid, high-quality enterprise automation, and not the rapid generation of volumes of complicated, messy and buggy code.
- Reduction of network traffic: Fluidapps varies significantly from model, table or data-driven products because it does not generate code, forms or objects, which must be assembled remotely and submitted to the client. Instead, a single device, residing on the client, will be copied to memory and the appropriate definitions and logic will be plugged in. This means only client logic and enterprise data will be sent to the client, significantly reducing network traffic and network requirements. This means more business activities can be performed with less network bandwidth and with a faster response time.
- Flexibility: Changes to existing data views may be performed on-the-fly anywhere between the development and end-user levels, without the need to generate or compile code. Fluidapps was originally designed for flexibility. There are over 200 dynamic data view definition options which may be defined anywhere along the development and deployment phase. Some of these options are data selection, sorting, column layout, column visibility, new columns and function rows for totals, sub-totals, averages, etc. Fluidapps will be the most flexible and agile enterprise application in the industry, providing a significant cost-reduction for customizations and enhancements.
- Total freedom: Fluidapps will liberate companies from hardware, operating system, database and computer language barriers, by operating on all of the standard operating systems and databases.
- Maximum enterprise data visibility: Fluidapps will be the only enterprise application in the industry with spreadsheet-like functionality. It will complete the evolution of spreadsheet technology by applying the same data manipulation and visibility concepts. The spreadsheet functionality will provide agility and visibility to all enterprise data and logic avoiding the additional cost of visibility applications such as spreadsheet integration tools, business intelligent applications and extract-transfer-and-load (ETL) products.
- Shortest learning curve: Because all data views are derived from the same universal data view, learning the navigation and functionality of one data view translates into learning all data views. This means Fluidapps will provide the shortest learning curve in the industry. No longer will there be variations in functionality and navigation between screens or forms.
- Scalability: Fluidapps is incredibly scalable, capable of operating on a hand-held device as well as on large distributed, transaction-based system environments. The patented back-end technology will make Fluidapps the most scalable product in the industry. Gone will be the days of disposing, re-purchasing and re-implementing enterprise software.
- Technology agility: Because there is only a single device, Fluidapps will be able to rapidly adapt to changing technology, eliminating the need to constantly upgrade and throw out applications for new technology advances.
- Standard languages: The Fluidapps product does not require learning a new proprietary language. Most of the logic is created through a point-and-click environment or keyboard operations. However, when custom logic is required for data validations and events; these may be written in one of several standard computer languages. These packets of code are stored, labeled and dated within one or more databases, simplifying management, operation and upgrades.
- Upgrade simplification: Upgrading Fluidapps is significantly simplified because of a single user interface. This means updates to the universal data view will instantly apply to all data views without the need to upgrade each and every altered form, inquiry or report. Upgrading applications will also be simplified because all data view definitions and logic are classified, stored and time stamped within one or more databases. Since business logic is stored within a database, identifying the difference between original and customized logic will be a snap. This will significantly reduce the time, cost and headaches involved with upgrades.
Market Frustrations

User frustrations have been building momentum within the enterprise software market since the mid 1990’s (see list below). The primary complaints are that these applications are too big, too complicated, too rigid and way too expensive to purchase, customize, implement and maintain. With millions of lines of interconnected and buggy code, companies are being crushed under the weight of software.
The current development trend within the enterprise software industry is exponentially heading towards complicated, rigid, monolithic (or bloatware) applications. Most of these applications have hundreds of navigation methods, making them difficult to learn and implement; sapping productivity from companies. Because quality is directly proportional to the size and complexity of software, the quality of these applications has been dropping. This adds more fuel to the fire of frustration. Innovation and vision seems to be lacking in the industry to address these problems with no solution in site.
Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is being touted as the solution to the industry woes. SaaS seems to be the only viable solution to ease the cost of ownership at this time. However, the cost of ownership is only one of the problems. If a software application is truly small, simple, flexible and easy to own and operate, companies will drop SaaS as quickly as they did time-share in the early 1980’s.
The problem is not entirely the software vendor’s fault. Companies have leaned towards safe software purchasing decisions, encouraging the rise of large and powerful software vendors. It seems customers are more willing to play it safe with poor software, than take the risk on new technology. This has been a tragic downward cycle. However, most enterprise applications are similar, and lack enough innovative technology to be really worth taking the risk.
If an enterprise application development technology truly reverses the trend of big, complicated and rigid and provides a significant value proposition, companies might be inclined to take the risk and embrace the technology, pulling the industry out of the downward cycle. The value just might out-weigh the risks. This could result in a technology exodus similar to the “film-to-digital” exodus in the photography industry.
Market Complaints
If you don’t believe the frustrations, the following is a list of the notable complaints in the enterprise software market:
“Complexity is a deadly software killer.”
— David Gelernter, “Mirror Worlds: Or the Day Software Puts the Universe in a Shoebox…” (Oxford University Press, 1992), 51
“The problem is even more evident in enterprise software than in consumer products…These products are very complex, obscure, and feature-laden. Each annual revision adds many new features, but fails to make the existing features understandable or controllable without months of rigorous training.”
— Alan Cooper, ”The Inmates are Running the Asylum”, Sams Publishing, 1999, 29
“…bloatware, with all its useless bells and whistles; programmers working in isolation, blissfully ignorant of how people will ultimately be using their software on a daily basis;”
— Meridith Levinson, “Let’s Stop Wasting $78 Billion a Year”, CIO Magazine, 10/15/2001
“Many companies are now spending 20% to 50% of their IT budgets maintaining, integrating, and upgrading existing packaged software; one midsized company spent $40M over two years. Despite the spending, most CIOs are frustrated with the current state of enterprise applications…”
— John Bermudez, “Enterprise Applications: Are They the Solution or Part of the Problem?”, AMR Research, 1/7/2002
“All too often, software engineers say, code is bloated, ugly, inefficient and poorly designed; even when programs do function correctly, users find them too hard to understand.”
— Charles C. Mann, “Why Software is So Bad”, Technology Review, 7/2002
“Business applications from major software makers are often difficult for the average office worker to use, costing companies millions of dollars and compromising many corporate software projects, according to a new study.”
— Alorie Gilbert, “Business apps get bad marks in usability”, CNET News, 1/14/2003
“Research says training costs rise because applications are hard to use. Many enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications are too difficult to use…Overall, the usability of these products is not acceptable for the amount they cost,‘ said research director Laurie Orlov.”
— Gareth Morgan, “Management; ERP Fails Forrester’s Usability Test”, VNU Computing, 01/23/2003
“The cost of ownership for a bloated product is higher. Support, modifications and enhancements, implementations, training, upgrades, and other activities across the software lifecycle all costs more. Complex code means lower quality, a common complaint in recent years.”
— Olin Thompson, “What’s Wrong with Application Software? Businesses Really Are Unique – One Size Can Never Fit All”, Technology-Evaluation.com, 2/10/2003
“It’s too complicated. It’s too expensive. That’s why it’s change-or-die time…The cost of that chaos? Last year, the National Institute of Standards & Technology estimated that the annual cost of difficult-to-use or flat-out buggy software on the U.S. economy was $59.5 billion. Analysts estimate business-software customers spend $5 installing and fixing their software for every $1 they spend on software.”
— Jim Kerstetter, “Commentary: Business Software Needs a Revolution”, Business Week Online, 6/23/2003
“Software is collapsing under the weight of its own complexity.”
— Claire Tristram, “Everyone’s a Programmer”, Technology Review, 11/2003
“When times were good and technology was advancing rapidly, customers accepted the forced upgrades as a fact of corporate life. Now customers aren’t swallowing it.”
— Kevin J. Delaney and David Banks, “Large Software Customers Refuse to Get With the Program”, Wall Street Journal, 1/2/2004
“Many IT managers are becoming increasingly agitated by the ballooning costs of maintaining packaged business applications and the relentless efforts of software vendors to push them to upgrade their systems.”
— Marc L. Songini, “ERP Users Bristle at Upgrade Pressure, Maintenance Costs…”, Computerworld, 2/16/2004
“The key to the Internet-driven, dynamic trade environment is agility, which is where traditional ERP packages have stumbled in the past.”
— P.J. Jakovijevic, “Enterprise Applications—The Genesis and Future, Revisited”, Technology-Evaluation.com, 4/3/2004
“This gap, the lack of the ability to change, costs the business dearly. Software needs to be the agent of change, not the enemy of change.”
— Olin Thompson, “What’s Wrong With Application Software? Business Changes, Software Must Change with the Business”, Technology-Evaluation.com, 5/31/2004
“What they found in their ERP was a monolithic, enterprise-centric, architecture that was ill-suited to doing business in a world where the business drivers had changed.”
— Sean Wheller, “Future Compatibility”, Tecnology-Evaluation.com, 7/15/2004
“…as enterprise software becomes increasingly comprehensive and complex, the costs and risks involved in changing it increase as well.”
— Martin Campbell-Kelly, “From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog: A history of the software industry” (Cambridge: MIT Press 2004), 198
“… application vendors have lost their way re: innovation and wealth creation. They no longer remember how to create something really new. Instead, we get marginal innovation. That is, we get new functions, features and capabilities built around the margins of the same old solutions we’ve always had… Worse, we’ve forgotten how to innovate or how to really create something new in a land without artificial technical constraints.”
— Brian Sommer, “Where Software Must Go”, zdnet.com, 7/1/2007
“A number of commentators have routinely bemoaned the lack of oxygen for innovation because of the need to keep big ticket SAP/Oracle/IBM systems chugging along…But before anyone can get there, I suspect we will all have to rethink the mess we’re in, considering new ways to deal with transactions while providing the benefits customers are yearning to see.”
— Dennis Howlett, “The ERP mess we’re in”, zdnet.com, 8/15/2007
“The reality is there is no killer app in supply chain excellence yet.”
— Bill Chessman, “Use what you already have to get moving with Visibility”, blogs.inovis.com, 9/26/2007
“Is enterprise software just too complex to deliver on its promises? After all, enterprise systems were supposed to streamline and simplify business processes. Instead, they have brought high risks, uncertainty and a deeply worrying level of complexity. Rather than agility, they have produced rigidity and unexpected barriers to change, a veritable glut of information containing myriad hidden errors, and a cloud of questions regarding their overall benefits.”
— Cynthia Rettig, “The Trouble with Enterprise Software”, MIT Sloan Management Review, 10/1/2007
“Enterprise software, it can hardly be debated, is pretty bad stuff. The high-dollar applications that businesses use to run their internal operations…are some of the least friendly, most difficult systems ever committed to code.”
— Khoi Vinh, “If it looks like a cow, swims like a dolphin and quacks like a duck, it must be enterprise software”, Subtraction.com, 10/19/2007
“The people who buy enterprise software aren’t the people who use enterprise software. That’s where the disconnect begins. And it pulls and pulls and pulls until the user experience is split from the buying experience so severely that the software vendors are building for the buyers, not the users. The experience takes a back seat to the feature list, future promises, and buzz words.”
— Jason F, “Why enterprise software sucks”, 37Signals.com Blog, 10/24/2007
“Technology is supposed to simplify business. This has been true from the Industrial Revolution to the internet age. But did the large software applications that were supposed to streamline large companies instead irrevocably slow them down? There’s a compelling argument to be made that they have.”
— Ben Worthen, Wall Street Journal Business Technology Blog, 2007
“Your chances of ERP success? Not good, my friend. Today’s ERP rollout has only a 7 percent chance of coming in on time, will probably cost more than what you estimated, and will likely deliver very unsatisfying results.”
— Thomas Wailgum, “ERP Backlash Coming Soon to a Company Near You”, advice.cio.com, 1/15/2009
“Of all the assets that an enterprise acquires, enterprise software brings with it the most unusual, onerous and restrictive set of constraints”
— Ray Wang quote in Thomas Wailgum’s “Why ERP is still so hard”, Computerworld, 9/30/2009
“Overall, the study’s findings are likely familiar music to followers of the ERP space, which has long been filled with stories of lawsuits filed by disgruntled customers, wild cost overruns and failed projects.”
— Chris Kanaracus, “System integrator says business benefits lower than expected”, Computerworld UK, 3/18/2010
“Executive stakeholders in the project will spin the ERP implementation into a success even when the monolithic system stifles an organization’s ability to change.”
— Tony Clement, Two Dot What? Blog on “The Trouble with Enterprise Software”, 8/21/2010
No Equal in the Market

The enterprise software industry is over a $50 billion market containing over 60 individual vertical application markets. The software development and deployment methods used to create applications within each of these vertical markets has failed to address the primary problems of size, complexity and rigidity. A solution to simplify software and provide a high degree of flexibility is missing in the market.
The patented technology behind Fluidapps is a new and innovative approach that will truly simplify and address the problems within the enterprise software market. The application is light, agile and based on the same characteristics of killer apps in the past.
The best way to describe the Fluidapps technology is to define what it is not. It does not generate code, forms or objects. It is not a framework, CASE tool, data-driven, model-driven or relationship-driven application. The product does not require or use a new computer language. The patented technology behind Fluidapps eliminates the need to build volumes of complicated code. Instead, the technology builds on the success of killer apps in the past, like the spreadsheet and browser applications by containing all user activities within a single, intuitive and consistent device.
The famous UNIX guru Eric Raymond once said, “Good programmers know what to write. Great ones know what to reuse.” The Holy Grail in the enterprise software market is the maximum reuse of code. The patented technology behind Fluidapps maximizes the reuse of code, by compressing all business activities into one universal device. There is no equal in the enterprise application market.