ZapThink » Mozilla http://www.zapthink.com Sharpening Your Vision of the Future of IT Fri, 10 Feb 2012 18:12:55 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Evolution of the Rich Internet Application Market http://www.zapthink.com/2009/05/01/evolution-of-the-rich-internet-application-market/ http://www.zapthink.com/2009/05/01/evolution-of-the-rich-internet-application-market/#comments Fri, 01 May 2009 00:05:00 +0000 Ronald Schmelzer http://test.zapthink.com/?p=ZTR-WS115 As the Internet continues to penetrate every aspect of our lives, both business and personal, the distinction between “Internet application” and “application” increasingly fades from view. Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) operate in the sweet spot among richness of Internet capability, richness of user interactivity, and richness of client-side computing capability. RIAs act as Service consumers as part of Service-Oriented Architecture implementations and enable Enterprise Mashups.

Since ZapThink first covered the space in 2002, the RIA market has matured considerably, establishing two core submarkets: RIA environments and RIA components. Adobe Systems emerging as a leader in the RIA environments submarket with their Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) and Flex products. Microsoft is a strong contender with their newer Silverlight technology. Open source vendors have emerged as significant players, and form a large portion of the RIA components submarket.

While the RIA market should continue to grow for the next few years, it will most likely merge with other markets long term and be indifferentiable from a market sizing perspective as the RIA category increasingly overlaps with other existing desktop and Internet application categories.

]]> Market Overview
  • ZapThink estimates that the total market for RIA will grow to over $700M by 2011.
  • Adobe is currently the biggest and most experienced RIA player, but it faces serious challenges on multiple fronts, most notably open source solutions and Microsoft, with its relatively new Silverlight technology.
  • Since 2006, ZapThink has seen substantial contraction in the RIA component submarket, elimination of the extensions submarket, and consolidation and expansion of the RIA environments submarket.

Future Trends

  • There is increasing demand for RIA capabilities in the enterprise, although people don’t identify the applications that leverage such capabilities as RIAs. Rather, RIA capabilities are features of many of those applications.
  • As the line between browser-based and desktop-based applications blurs, and as approaches for abstracting functionality and information from user interfaces develop, other markets will eventually merge with the RIA market.

Table of Contents

  1. Overview of the Rich Internet Application (RIA) Market
    1. The State of the Rich Internet Application Market
    2. Identifying RIAs
    3. Overview of the Market
    4. Qualitative Changes in RIA Market since 2006
    5. New RIA Market Motivators from 2009 through 2013
  2. RIA Market Evolution
    1. The Decline of the RIA Component market
    2. Consolidation in the RIA Environments market
    3. Ambiguity in the RIA Extensions market
    4. Microsoft’s RIA Market Penetration
    5. Open Source Trends Impacting RIA Market
    6. Increasing Role of Data Access in RIAs
    7. Macroeconomic factors impacting RIA growth
  3. RIA Market Survey Results
    1. End-User Interviews
  4. RIA Market Estimates and Predictions
  5. Conclusions
    1. Key Notes
    2. Figures

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]]> http://www.zapthink.com/2009/05/01/evolution-of-the-rich-internet-application-market/feed/ 0 XForms meets Ajax: Can they get along? http://www.zapthink.com/2006/03/21/xforms-meets-ajax-can-they-get-along/ http://www.zapthink.com/2006/03/21/xforms-meets-ajax-can-they-get-along/#comments Tue, 21 Mar 2006 00:03:00 +0000 admin http://test.zapthink.com/?p=1785 And according to the analyst they can and hopefully will work together.

"For sure, people are leveraging Ajax to do XForms-like things," he said, "but I see a better world where Ajax is XForms-enabled. Since, Ajax is not a standard, but rather a collection of different UI operations. XForms, on the other hand, is a standard. It represents how form-based information is represented, collected and exchanged. For developers to use XForms as the standard and Ajax as the implementation / representation makes a lot more sense than either one replacing the other."

Read more at: SearchWebServices]]> “These two are very different technologies,” explains Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst with ZapThink LLC. “Ajax is focused on the presentation and interaction with users across an asychronous set of interactions. XForms is focused solely on the issue of representing data collection and exchange between clients and servers.”

And according to the analyst they can and hopefully will work together.

“For sure, people are leveraging Ajax to do XForms-like things,” he said, “but I see a better world where Ajax is XForms-enabled. Since, Ajax is not a standard, but rather a collection of different UI operations. XForms, on the other hand, is a standard. It represents how form-based information is represented, collected and exchanged. For developers to use XForms as the standard and Ajax as the implementation / representation makes a lot more sense than either one replacing the other.”

Read more at: SearchWebServices

]]> http://www.zapthink.com/2006/03/21/xforms-meets-ajax-can-they-get-along/feed/ 0 W3C approves specification for Web site scripting http://www.zapthink.com/2003/01/09/w3c-approves-specification-for-web-site-scripting/ http://www.zapthink.com/2003/01/09/w3c-approves-specification-for-web-site-scripting/#comments Thu, 09 Jan 2003 00:01:00 +0000 admin http://test.zapthink.com/?p=348 Read more at: InfoWorld]]> An analyst, however, while saying the specification could yield better Web browsers, said support still is needed.

“DOM Level 2 is the latest rev of this model,” said Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink, in Waltham, Mass., in an e-mail response to an inquiry.

“While this is important for the developer crowd, the user population as a whole won’t really have much interaction with the DOM. It really is up to Web browser vendors like Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera, and the like to add this functionality to their products. So, we will need to wait until this makes its way into products before we can see any benefit,” he said.

Read more at: InfoWorld

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