Progress OpenEdge LTS (Long Term Support) with Propel Tech

OpenEdge continuously evolves with new features and enhancements to help you meet the demand for application performance, availability, security, and data management, and all businesses can benefit from these updates. 

With over six million application users of Progress OpenEdge, businesses must have the latest information about the product lifecycle. Version 11 is now in its sunset (into the last three years of support), and support is due to finish in April 2025; therefore, businesses need to consider transitioning to the newer version. 

Version 12.2 is a Long Term Supported (LTS) release, not to be retired until 2028. which means that customers can realise the benefits of OpenEdge while continuing to receive technical support for several years. An LTS gives excellent operational stability and longevity on a release while allowing informed, confident decisions.

What is new compared to older versions?

Progress OpenEdge version 12.2 will support your business continuity with new auto-recovery enhancements. These will get you back up and running within seconds of a critical failure or outage and includes a new mechanism for automatically connecting to an alternate database if the connection to the primary database fails.

The expansion of server-side join processing improves the overall performance of OpenEdge by reducing the amount of data transferred across the network, reducing the computational cost on the client. In short, it now takes fewer in-house resources to run the software, which is a huge selling point to change to a newer version as soon as possible.

Version 12.2 also has some new security features, such as the Safe User ID feature, which helps maintain the synchronisation between client databases. This is extremely important to prevent unnecessary data leaks, vital for all businesses dealing with private and confidential information.

There is also now more support for Advanced Business Language (ABL). A DevOps engineer, working across code, application maintenance and management, can look at active ABL application requests to identify, for example, the following information:

• The time the request started
• The length of time that the request took to execute
• The user who sent the request
• The name of the procedure that is running
• The requested URL

Making the switch

To take advantage of these new features, it is a great idea to utilise a software support company to support you in switching to the latest software rather than using internal resources.

Within your business, employees are constantly working on Business As Usual and often don’t have the capacity to plan a migration to version 12.2. So, involving a third party to support your application will save time, resources and money to have a seamless transition to the new software. It would be best if you got the transition right the first time to avoid any delays in the day-to-day running of the software.

Support teams like Propel Tech, experts in digital transformation and software project rescue, can analyse the current setup. This includes delving into the licensing and operating system to ensure everything is compatible. Software support companies also have access to specialist Database Administrators who understand the configurations, which is unlikely to be found within businesses outside the tech sphere.

How Propel Tech can help

Our team can make the transition easier, delivering a complete 360 transformation in strategy, delivery and support when a specialist skill set is unavailable in-house.

The first step is planning for the software change. Our project management team will help organise a plan of action, from analysis to final production migration and post-migration support. Gaining project management services while developing your Progress OpenEdge software allows your company to gain expert insight and be assured that everything is under control.

Performing the upgrade, our talented technical operations team can complete the work or help and support your staff to do so; with more hands on deck, the upgrade will happen more smoothly. We also support out-of-hours to help minimise the impact on your business; we can offer a considerable amount of support services as we advance as we will have learned more about your business and application in the process and can present them going forward.

Moreover, upgrading to a new version is a perfect opportunity to look at how your system’s database is configured and optimised. Our Database Healthcheck report can highlight areas where improvements can be made and can be included in the initial analysis step.

Then, it is crucial to have support testing the upgrade; this involves running the upgrade process several times to give your users accurate information on system downtime when the production upgrade is done. With custom tools, Propel Tech has helped clients migrate systems that are 24/7/365 with minimal downtime (measured in minutes).

Although OpenEdge’s backwards compatibility is very good, upgrading to new versions can always bring up unexpected issues that need to be resolved. If you do not have the capacity to do a full regression test, a software support team like Propel Tech can offer this before live deployment, along with usability testing, for peace of mind.

Next steps

As experts across past and present technologies, Propel Tech find solutions that help manage change, so your business thrives and grows.

The Propel Tech team can unlock your business’s full potential through technology and digital transformation by creating a collaborative partnership with you.

Get in touch today for bespoke software development and software modernisation! Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn for the latest updates.