There are companies that have gone through a roller coaster
of emotions when Microsoft abandoned Silverlight support on Mobile platforms
and Adobe abandoned Flash support on Mobile platforms.
Entrepreneurs are supposed to see the future, but when
technology changes, they are no exception to what a common man goes through.
The sense of fear takes over the ability to think clearly and make rational
decisions. I have seen number of companies facing this dilemma, and going into
a never ending spiral of confusion and uncertainty, leaving the decision making
process to others (market) to decide the future of their software & service
application. It is painful to sit and watch. This is very sad. I wanted to help
those folks who need a help or an assurance from a tech expert, so I decided to
write this blog.
Computer is still the king. A mobile application should be
built based on the merits it provides. If you are building a data intensive
mobile application that requires lot of data entry, then you are missing the
point. Choosing the right technology is the easiest of all. You should know
what you are currently providing and what you are planning to offer in the
future. Once the vision is there, the rest will fall in place. It makes sense
for the managers to get confused over this trivial issue. Entrepreneurs are
leaders, they should know that following the crowd is not always a good
strategy. Choose a technology that will transform your vision to reality and go
with it. It is not in the selection of the technology that matters, but what
you do with it is what really makes all the difference.
When it comes to technology, past trend is not an indicator
of future trends. To my knowledge, there are three winners when it comes to RIA
technologies. These technologies are here to stay, but the choice is yours to
make.
1) Adobe Flex: The best RIA applications are created in
Adobe Flex. Flex is best suited for delivering rich and data visualization application
in the form of a web application. Works well with almost all the server side
technologies.
2) HTML5 & JQuery: Light weight front end which is best
suited for animation & software applications that are not data intensive.
Good for creating web & mobile application.
3) Oracle ADF: Complete front to back solutions delivered
using Java technologies. It is best
suited for building enterprise business solution. If you are a java shop, then
Oracle ADF is something you should consider.
Every technology has its own share of pros & cons. There
will never be a perfect technology to choose. Technologies always evolve and
what you see now is just a beginning. Most companies compare their web site
traffic with that of Google and Nasdaq, but they don’t realize is 99.9999% of
them do not expect anything close to what Google or Nasdaq gets as hit counts
per day. Instead of wasting the time & energy bothering about such issues, the
companies should be thinking and focusing in improving user experience, and the
quality of the software service they provide.
If your company is heavily
invested on Adobe’s Flex technologies, then you are way ahead of your
competitors as of today. Focus on your
strength and keep moving forward.
Adobe’s comment about the future of flex is regrettable, just for that
comment alone it is worth building any new application on a non flex
environment. Keep your vision current
& alive, the choice of technology will take care of itself, as it is just a
tool to bring your vision to reality.
Another quick advice, when choosing the technology, the use
of “Open Source” is widely misused and misrepresented to suit the needs of
people who represent it. Free software is not necessarily open source and Open
source software is not always free software. In most cases, Free is like in free speech and
not free lunch. Beware of it!
