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Claris Engage is the biggest Claris event of the year, held amidst the sleek futurescape of the Apple campus in Austin, Texas. Here the Claris senior team get to lay out their take on the past year and their vision for the future. We sent a small team to hear things firsthand, ask questions, soak up the atmosphere – and rub shoulders with the world’s best FileMaker developers.
Claris Engage takes place over two days, during which thousands of attendees mingle, listen and discuss ideas. There’s a buzz about the event and it’s full of exciting ideas. Often the most interesting conversations are the unexpected, impromptu ones you have as you leave a presentation, turn to the person next to you, and ask them what they thought. Generally you end up discussing how best to apply what you’ve just learnt.
We’ve come back energised and looking forward to putting new ideas into practice. Here are our key takeaways.
Claris continues to grow, and has experienced particularly impressive growth in the past year. One reason for this is its successful roll-out of Claris Connect into US schools to help them connect Student Information Systems (SIS) and Apple’s School Manager software – Claris Connect being the tool that connects with third party apps to sync data and do other tasks.
What’s especially encouraging about Claris’s growth is that it is profitable growth, unlike the type of growth that startups so often specialise in. Continuing profitability means the continuing ability to invest in products – so this is very good news for those of us who use and depend on FileMaker.
Claris are forging ahead with the introduction of new FileMaker AI tools, making it easier and quicker to integrate FileMaker with AI models. These integrations can, for example, dramatically improve search functions.
This is what FileMaker has always excelled at – making it easier for developers to deploy rapid, powerful solutions. Today it’s great to see that FileMaker is still getting better at doing this. Which leads us to…
In the world of tech, new generally feels better than old. Startups sound exciting, while platforms that have been around for decades sound like old hat.
But when it comes to choosing a platform you’ll use for many years, stability and longevity are exactly what you want. That exciting-sounding new low-code platform may never make any money and it quite likely never will. This is just a fact of startup life. But if this is the foundation that your business is built on, it’s a big problem.
And that’s why FileMaker turning 40 this year matters. A technology with such longevity is a technology that has enjoyed major ongoing investment over the years, and retains great value. The longer FileMaker thrives, the more businesses depend on it and the more valuable it becomes as a business asset.
Couple the longevity with the ongoing profitability, and it couldn’t be better news for those of us who work with this remarkable platform.
One of the pleasures of Claris Engage are the sessions by independent FileMaker developers. You can listen to enthusiastic experts speaking on the topics closest to their heart, and often you’ll learn something new and valuable.
We attended one such session by a developer called John Renfrew. We’ve been attending his sessions for years – always on the topic of OData. John is a passionate advocate for using OData – the Open Data Protocol, a protocol for building APIs – for integrating other applications into FileMaker instead of using the FileMaker Data API.
We already use a lot of OData but we’ve tended to favour the FileMaker Data API for integrations. In the past we’ve been interested in what John had to say but never fully persuaded. Now, however, he has personally convinced us. Claris has recently improved the OData feature set so it’s now more comprehensive and powerful, and it looks as though OData might be the future for integrations into FileMaker. We’ll be using it more in future.
The improved OData tools are just one example, but they are further evidence that the Claris ecosystem keeps on evolving, expanding and improving. FileMaker not only has a secure future but it’s becoming an increasingly impressive and effective platform.
The Claris team often refer to their three key tools, FileMaker, Claris Connect and Claris Studio, as an ‘operating system’ for a business. Your operating system is where you go when you need to find information, record a task or carry out a series of actions – it’s the hub that your business revolves around. And, not coincidentally, the idea of an ‘operating system’ is also a great way of describing what we do for our clients.
We came away from Claris Connect 2025 in an optimistic mood. Claris as an organisation is in a good place. They’re not only growing, but they have new areas to expand into, and they’re doing so profitably. This is excellent news for those of us who use Claris products. Plus, we’re seeing FileMaker continue to evolve in useful ways – and that makes it that much easier for us to solve problems for the businesses we work with. Which in the end is what it’s all about.
Read Rick Kalman, Claris platform evangelist's highlights from Claris Engage.
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