Evolution of the Rich Internet Application Market

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.

Is Google in the Right Gear?

Meanwhile, Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with ZapThink, has doubts about Google’s ability to make much of a mark with Gears.

“Google Gears is hardly game-changing,” Bloomberg said. “It’s far from being the ‘threat to desktop software’ or any kind of bona fide challenge to Microsoft. Instead, it enables developers to add the offline capability that’s a core part of many rich Internet application solutions today. In other words, the commercial/enterprise software world has had offline capability for a while now, and Google is taking a step to bringing a lightweight, open-source toolkit to the masses that will enable a broader range of developers to add this capability to their Web apps.”

Read more at: eWeek

Microsoft, Dell, Intel Submit Network Management Spec

WSDM, however, does not compete because it’s primarily used in managing applications that communicate using web services-based interfaces, Ronald Schmelzer, analyst for market researcher ZapThink LLC, said.

Together, the specifications could simplify management of software, computer systems and devices within a service-oriented architecture, an evolution in distributed computing based on web services standards.

“Having two languages is better than having 500,” Schmelzer said of WS-M and WSDM.

Read more at: InfortmationWeek

Microsoft: Indigo patents would not affect interoperability

Microsoft’s intention to possibly seek patents on Indigo should not make much difference to open source developers, according to one analyst responding to an email inquiry.

“Well, I think it’s a consistent stance for Microsoft. [I am] not sure how much open source and Microsoft go together as concepts in general,” said Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink. “But I don’t think open source folks are any more encouraged or discouraged by this move.”

Indigo was always meant to be a Microsoft-specific product line and the company already owns patents on pre-existing technologies included in it, Schmelzer said.

A Java-based counterpart to Indigo is not likely, Schmelzer said. “Will we see a Java-based Indigo? Probably not in my lifetime.”

Read more at: Infoworld

Community Debates Microsoft’s Open-Source Agenda

Another possibility, suggested Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at Web services and SOA (service-oriented architecture) research house ZapThink, is that Microsoft is simply trying to get to know the open-source world better for its own purposes.

“I will hazard one response: in the words of Sun Tzu, ‘Know your enemy as you know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles with no danger of defeat,’” Bloomberg said.

Read more at: eWeek

OASIS Tackles Unified Installs

Ron Schmelzer, a senior analyst at ZapThink, said the specification will make it possible for companies to configure and manage different software packages without worrying about whether they’ll install correctly.

“There are so many points of integration, dependencies and rolling upgrades, especially with all the new virus and security threats out there, that no company can simply install a software package out of the box and expect it to work,” he said. “There are simply too many interdependencies among products to make that happen in a reliable way.”

There are vendors today that provide a third-party solution, he added, but they only address software that’s already been developed, not looking at software coming down the road.

“The OASIS SDD spec is looking forward at new software products and provides the configurability and interoperability before they are even implemented,” Schmelzer said. “Sort of a plug-and-play for software, but at a more granular level.”

Read more at: InternetNews

Novell to add more open source to exteNd

ExteNd is based on software Novell acquired in its 2002 purchase of SilverStream Software. To date, Novell has had difficulty in convincing developers to write applications to the exteNd platform, according to Ronald Schmelzer, a senior analyst with ZapThink LLC, also in Waltham. “All this SilverStream stuff was a new market for them, and I don’t think they ever captured enough mindshare to get people to build applications on top of exteNd,” he said.

The fact that Novell is relying more on JBoss may not bode well for the long-term viability of the SilverStream code, he said. “I think over time they’re going to let it go quietly, or maybe they’ll take more of the (intellectual property) and contribute it back to open source,” he said.

Read more at: InfoWorld

Web Services Distributed Management spec approved

An analyst said WSDM would provide for standardization at a time when the market for Web services management is consolidating.

“We’re seeing the ‘big boys’ enter with significant products to market, including IBM, HP, and CA,” said Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink. “As a result, the big initiative is to standardize how these various products can manage the Web services that are running on other people’s platforms, especially on IBM, BEA, Microsoft, Oracle, and Sun.

“As such, WSDM goes a long way to solve two problems: the use of Web services to manage systems and the ability to manage Web services themselves. What we should expect to see is more consolidation of vendors and products in this space and some agreement on WSDM as the format for solving heterogeneous Web services management issues,” Schmelzer said.

Read more at: InfoWorld

Fine-Tuning Of The Internet

“XML smooths things for servers and programmers,” said Ron Schmelzer, an analyst at the research firm ZapThink. “But it puts new strains on the network guys.”

Read more at: Investor’s Business Daily

Novell puts weight behind Windows email client

The idea of an open-source desktop application displacing Microsoft’s software has gained credibility thanks to the recent success of the Firefox project, said Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst with ZapThink LLC. “The only real successful challenger to Microsoft on the desktop is open source,” he said. “Microsoft really has to do something to regain the momentum they had in the late 1990s,” he said.

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