Learning Claris FileMaker

This is Part 2 of a 2 part (90 minute) amazing conversation with Rick Kalman, Director of Product Management for FileMaker, and Robert Holsey, Senior Product Manager for FileMaker.

Rick and Robert talk about, among other things, Claris Connect, the benefits of acquisition instead of strategic partnerships, save as XML, responsive layouts, Apple's influence, live database development, moving to a web first strategy and changes to the relationship graph.

We are very honored that they took so much of their time to talk with us candidly and openly.

FileMaker Inc. is Now Claris - Day One Recording from DevCon 2019

...

What was the original brief from the FileMaker team?

Carissa Heller: The brief started as an assignment to refine and clarify “Workplace Innovation Platform” as a foundation for the new brand.

We were tasked with transforming the current FileMaker brand into something that accurately represents its business offerings, customers and values.

Why is this investment in brand such an important milestone for the company?

CH: Your brand communicates who you are, what you stand for and why you exist.

As FileMaker acknowledges its rich history and continues to look towards the future, it is essential that the brand signals the start of a new chapter.

There were several catalysts for our engagement—the primary being the strategic acquisition to expand its product portfolio. FileMaker was planning to announce the acquisition of Stamplay, a workflow automation service.

This new offering led FileMaker to reevaluate its brand positioning and identity.

Read more about the FileMaker to Claris move ...

...

Our goal was to make technology easier to use and more accessible without limiting the imaginations of our talented developers or the sophistication of their applications.

Since that time, the world has caught up with our vision.

The ability to develop powerful software that solves clear problems within a business or industry has only become more valuable.

The economy is going to be defined by the companies that harness technologies to transform the way they work.

At the same time, the supply of web, mobile and app developers have not kept up with the demand.

This means many companies will struggle to keep up unless we can bridge the gap between their skilled workforce and their technology needs.

The idea of a Workplace Innovation Platform was created to address this exact problem by empowering everyday problem solvers.

We also find ourselves at a point in software development where an entire universe of cloud services can deliver even more sophisticated solutions to these problem solvers, so long as they can easily connect them with their own apps.

...

Claris’ VP of worldwide marketing and customer success shares story of FileMaker’s rebirth as Claris

Large or small, a company that decides to change its identity faces a massive undertaking.

The time and effort required means the entire company and product vision must be fully aligned, with the full team excited for and passionate about the undertaking.

Point being, it’s not a choice made lightly, particularly if you are one of those companies that’s been around long enough to know exactly what you’re getting into.

Our brand, FileMaker, is one that carries so much rich history.

The company created and defined the Workplace Innovation Platform and has grown to over 50,000 customers and more than one million end-users.

There was only one problem: FileMaker, with its component names of “File” and “Maker,” was simply too specific to span the customer experiences that we want to create in our next 20 years.

For that reason, we decided to choose a new identity.

We chose the name Claris for several reasons.

Learn more reading FileMaker / Claris blog posts

Apple may have acquired machine learning startup Fashwell

By Amber Neely - Wednesday, August 07, 2019

Shopping search startup Fashwell employees started listing Apple as an employer on their LinkedIn profiles, hinting that the company may have been purchased by the iPhone maker.

Read more on AppleInsider blog post ...

Every web designer chimera is building something without needing to deploy a single line of code.

It's a never ending aspiration for many, but Stamplay.com has built an innovative solution for them: a platform where building simple social web apps is really easy as putting up an IFTTT (eg. If This Then That) recipe.

That's a reasonable idea as many of the webapps main functionalities doen't need to be re-invented every time.

We approched this project by illustrating many small objects that in some way represent the huge quantity of Lego-like bricks you can play with within the web tool.

The main target are web designers so we used contemporary flat design and bright full colors (from the Stamplay brand identity) for making them happy! ;)

Learn more with this (short) video ...

At DevCon this morning (2019 Aug 6), CEO Brad Freitag announced that FileMaker is rebranding as Claris.

The presentation concluded with their new mission statement, “Power to the Problem Solvers.”

We couldn’t be more excited about this change.

To celebrate this milestone, it’s worth remembering where we came from.

So here’s the history of FileMaker and Claris: ...