ZapThink: RIAs Based on Ajax, Flash, and Java Will Supplant Static Web Applications and Portals

ZapThink: RIAs Based on Ajax, Flash, and Java Will Supplant Static Web Applications and Portals
ZapThink – July 27, 2006

Demand for Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) and more sophisticated user interaction is increasing dramatically, and enterprise spending on RIA applications will surpass $500 million by 2011, according to ZapThink. The analysts say enhancements to six types of business applications are helping drive RIA spending: high-transaction and event-driven Internet applications, next-generation portals, enhanced business intelligence solutions, application modernization, and Service composition or “mashup” solutions.

In a new report, ZapThink describes RIAs as providing an end user experience that combines the experience that users are most familiar with in desktop and client/server applications — such as rich graphical user interface, responsive performance and highly interactive functionality — with the scalability, distribution, and manageability benefits that Internet applications provide.

“Users today increasingly demand more from their online user experiences,” said Ronald Schmelzer, founder and senior analyst with ZapThink. “The convergence of SOA and Web 2.0 are leading organizations to retire their static Web pages and inflexible portal applications. Today’s set the bar for user interactivity higher than ever before, and expect their online exper

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Rich Internet Applications: Market Trends and Technologies

Two of the often conflicting desires in IT are the need for rich user interfaces that maximize a user’s productivity on the one hand and the desire to decentralize computing so that a user can gain access to the widest base of IT assets at the lowest possible cost on the other. These two forces are at odds because rich client interfaces, until recently, have only been possible in certain limited scenarios in which the business logic and computing resources were combined with the interface.

However, a new class of presentation layer is emerging in the marketplace. This Rich Internet Application provides an end user experience that is similar to client/server applications, with a rich graphical user interface, responsive performance and highly interactive functionality. As companies desire richer interaction between their Web Services-based applications and the users of those applications, Rich Internet Applications will continue to gain prominence in the enterprise. Users will increasingly demand the ability to present very large data sets to a dispersed audience without sacrificing the economics that Web applications or the rich user experience that traditional client/server applications provide.

While significant attention and hype have recently been placed on emerging RIA technologies such as Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX), there are still many questions about precisely what business problems are driving RIA adoption. Furthermore, is the RIA class of applications merely a flash in the pan soon to be subsumed by a more potent solution to business problems, or is there sustainability and repeatability in RIA solutions that provide long-lasting and compelling value to businesses? As such, this report aims to tackle the following questions to help establish the current state of the RIA market, quantify business trends, and postulate the future of the RIA markets:

• What are the emerging classes of business problems targeted by RIA solutions?
• What are businesses currently spending on RIA solutions, and how will this change over time?
• What are the primary technological approaches being implemented by businesses, and how will these trends play out over the next few years?
• Who are the primary buyers of RIA solutions and how does this impact RIA deal sizes?
• What is the prospective market sizing for RIA solutions and how will this change over time?
• How are RIA solutions categorized by different segment and market approaches?

This report aims to identify emerging market trends and address the above questions, but does not aim to specifically analyze individual RIA solutions or product offerings, nor rank vendors according to how they meet specific business requirements.

How To Overcome Ajax Roadblocks

“Google brought in a big team of the top Ajax developers,” in order to launch its Ajax-powered services, notes Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst with ZapThink. “But Google is a multiple-billion dollar company and so it’s been able to do that.”

Schmelzer has no doubt that Ajax will ultimately become widely deployed with Web services and SOA.

“We’re not seeing it much today yet, but we will in the future,” he believes. “Ajax hasn’t made its way into products yet, but it certainly will soon. Probably within the next twenty-four months it will be hard to find a significant enterprise application that doesn’t have some Ajax in it.”

Read more at: SearchWebServices

Why Ajax may be the future of Web services

The answer, say analysts, is yes, even though it might be a bit slow in coming. Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst with ZapThink, says that eventually Ajax applications will take the place of enterprise portals that now bind together Web services and SOAs.

“People will replace Web-based portals with rich clients built in Ajax,” he says, “because they offer richer functionality. You’ll find it both within the enterprise as well as when enterprises interact with customers.”

Schmelzer also sees Ajax use growing because of a trend he’s noticed. He says that in SOAs, he is seeing “an emerging class of applications that is a hybrid – it’s not a Web browser and not a desktop application. They combine the two and they consume distributed applications with all the benefits of user interactivity, but they’re distributed over the Web, so they’re easy to deploy.”

“Ajax is still very much a developer story, and has to be elevated to the business level,” Schmelzer says.

Read more at: SearchWebServices

ZapThink: Client-side Web Technologies Inadequate to Meet Evolving Needs of Web Services

ZapThink: Client-side Web Technologies Inadequate to Meet Evolving Needs of Web Services
New Class of Rich and Smart Clients Evolving to Solve Next-Generation Computing Needs

WALTHAM, Mass.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–March 3, 2004–The Internet and Web have provided immense scalability and manageability benefits to computer users for a decade now, but at a price – poor support for rich interactivity. Now, companies are increasingly demanding a rich set user experience capabilities that include visual interactivity elements and instant access to information, interaction with distributed and remote applications, and integration with local desktop applications. ZapThink concludes in its report entitled “Rich and Smart Clients for Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs)” that today’s Web technologies are wholly inadequate to meet the needs of emerging standards-based, loosely coupled, distributed applications.

“Simply put, today’s corporate portals must move beyond Web-based thin client technologies,” said Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst with ZapThink. “Rather, companies must leverage the power of Web Services and Service-Oriented Architectures to offer rich clients that provide deep interactivity, yet retain the scalability and manageability benefits that browsers provide.”

ZapThink’s report analyzes a new class of rich client vendor offering and several approaches to providing rich clients that in part rely upon SOAs to provide the optimal combination of rich user interaction and low cost of ownership through standards-based distributed computing. The report identifies the windows of opportunities as well as market growth predictions for new entrants and incumbent vendors.

Other key findings of the report include:

• Rich clients will supplant portals as the primary interface to Web Services and Service-oriented functionality in the enterprise by the end of 2007.
• The total opportunity for rich clients for SOAs is over $923 million by 2010.
• The window of opportunity for new entrants in the rich client market will start to wane with the release of the Microsoft Longhorn update of windows in the 2006-2007 timeframe.
• The increasing adoption of sometimes-connected devices, mobile computing, asynchronous computing, and e-Forms will mandate widespread and rapid adoption of rich clients.

The report, available on ZapThink’s website at www.zapthink.com, discusses several companies, including Adobe (NASDAQ: ADBE), Altio, Apple, AT&T, Citrix, Curl, Cysive, DreamFactory, FileMaker, Focus Solutions, General Interface, Harmonia, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, JackBe, Kinitos, Laszlo Systems, Lucent, Macromedia (NASDAQ: MACR), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), Motorola, Mozilla, Nexaweb, Novell (NASDAQ: NOVL), Oracle, Plumtree, RatchetSoft, SAP, SCO Group (NASDAQ: SCOX), Siebel, Softricity, TiVo, Vignette, and Vultus.

Read more at: ZapThink Press Release

Rich and Smart Clients for Service-Oriented Architectures

Companies originally moved to adopt standards-based technologies like those underlying the Web and the Internet as a way to achieve distributed computing functionality at a very low total cost of ownership. However, these companies had to forego many of the user interface and productivity advantages that other distributed computing methods, such as traditional client/server applications, used to give them. As a result, companies continue to struggle to address the issue of how to realize the benefits of rich clients in conjunction with the benefits of distributed, low-cost applications.

While companies have long delivered application functionality to Web browsers, users are now coming to expect increasingly greater interactivity from this presentation tier. They are demanding a set of rich user experience capabilities that include visual interactivity elements and instant access to information, interaction with distributed and remote applications, and integration with local desktop applications. Businesses today want to gain the operational and cost advantages of Internet and Web Services technologies, but don’t want the limitations that Web browsers impose on user interfaces.

This report discusses and analyzes approaches to providing the optimal combination of rich client interaction and low-cost interaction through standards-based distributed computing. In addition, this report will present an approach to designing SOAs that appropriately abstract presentation layer considerations and enable users to choose the user interfaces that are most appropriate to their business needs without having to change any underlying business logic.