I neglected to post an announcement to this group. Oops.
I have closed Nebula R&D, my business focused on providing products and services to the MVDBMS industry. All new business development is dedicated to offering modern software and services to larger and more diverse consumer and business audiences.
Until those go production, I continue to provide strategic IT consultation and project management in the MV ecosystem and beyond. There are better answers to migration, and less painful ways to manage migration or modernization for those inclined in those directions.
There are no changes for this group. We have many managers including myself who continue to monitor for new members and issues.
I'm republishing an announcement below for those who have not seen it on LinkedIn.
Exchanges are always welcome.
Kind regards to all.
Thanks for your time.
T
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Nebula R&D has been happily retired. I thank all of our dedicated clients and colleagues for your support and patience. :)
A number of factors contributed to closing Nebula.
-
It was simply time. I've been wanting to shift the business direction
for a few years, and 2021-2022 gave me that opportunity. Sometime his
year or next, I do plan to open a new business with a more narrow MV
offering - not the broad menu offered by Nebula.
- Most of our
clients have moved off of MV and the only new calls coming in were for
assistance with migration or otherwise sunsetting existing
installations. That kinda hurt. I stopped active marketing and sales and
kept the doors open until our last client was finally off of MV.
-
While "modernization" is the word on most lips, it's always been a
challenge to work with stakeholders to modernize MV apps. As I get older
it's increasingly difficult to take on the uphill battle, which is
unnecessary outside of this industry.
- With Covid, many
businesses took a cautionary posture and froze budgets. Though yes, many
businesses took the opportunity to go into development overdrive - go
figure. But getting new business in the MV industry had become a
challenge, and as noted above, and I wasn't interested in pursuing that
kind of new business anymore.
- Rocket's acquisition of all MV
platforms resulted in quiet forums and existential off-list discussions.
I hope Rocket steps up to their position as an industry leader and
channel partner, and I wish them the very best.
The world changes
much faster these days and it's tough for a generalist to keep up. So,
over the last 1-2 years, I've shifted from being a generalist, offering a
variety of interfaces with MV, to focusing intently on more narrow
segments of the IT industry, outside of MV. I've built a small cloud
network which hosts various services, and am building new
consumer-facing SaaS businesses, hosted in the network. I've focused
intently on the WordPress industry as a CMS and core front-end for our
new apps. And I've re-trained deeply with React, TypeScript, and related
libraries for modern front-end development and integration with
WordPress. At some point I would enjoy porting the business logic back
into MV - but that depends on licensing costs which, sadly, aren't yet
oriented toward this modern use-case. Again, I hope Rocket navigates
this.
Along with this, I've been working with colleagues on a new
front-end GUI designer for MV - similar to familiar offerings, but of
course entirely based on modern tooling. This platform has been in
production for some years, front-ending robust MV apps for many clients.
If I get back to servicing the MV industry, this product will lead the
way. The door is still open on that.
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