With AJAX and SOA, RIA is even more compelling and less risky
Vendors have struggled for years to sell thin-client, interactive user interface (UI) technology. These rich Internet applications (RIA) solutions rarely caught on with organizations despite the drawbacks of standard Web interfaces and client-server solutions, such as constant page loads and the high cost of deploying and maintaining thick client applications.
Even though RIA offerings appeared compelling in terms of increased interactivity and lower costs, organizations largely ignored them. Why? Because the RIA market was a confusing mishmash of products that relied on a variety of underlying components, such as Flash, Java, and proprietary presentation technologies. Many solutions forced IT to learn proprietary development tools and use vendor-specific techniques to integrate with existing systems. The risk of investing in an RIA product that might be gone tomorrow combined with the hard to prove, soft return on investment (ROI) of UI enhancements resulted in most companies ignoring RIA vendors and leaving their static Web pages and fat client-server solutions in place.
RIA reinvigorated with an AJAX and SOA infusion
RIA-type solutions are not dead. In fact, they are much more compelling than ever because they continue to offer the same core value proposition they always have, but they are now piggy-backing on two of the most powerful concepts in the industry: AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript And XML) and SOA (service-oriented architecture).
AJAX is one of the hottest industry buzzwords. It is a component of another hot concept, Web 2.0, an all-encompassing vision of adding more interactivity and enhanced collaboration capabilities to the Internet. Google deserves much of the credit for making AJAX mainstream, despite not inventing the technology or being first to market with these solutions. It's Gmail email service and Google Maps offered compelling interactive experiences using standard technology available in most major Web browsers when competitive sites relied on static pages and dull interfaces. Google's popular consumer offerings demonstrated both the AJAX's viability and made it easy for business executives to see the value of enhanced interfaces. Not surprisingly, RIA vendors have been jumping on the AJAX bandwagon and are currently enhancing their solutions to support AJAX applications.
As for SOA, the concept has been the guiding IT architectural principle for many organizations for the last three to five years. In an SOA world, applications are retrofitted or built with industry standard interfaces that leverage XML and Web services in order to "service-enable" them. These services can then be easily accessed and utilized, allowing relatively quick and cheap integration of IT assets. By combining services with business logic, a new class of meta applications, called composite applications, can be created. RIA vendors, who had already built their products to integrate with backend systems, enhanced their offerings to fit into the standards-based SOA world, opening up a simple and non-proprietary ways to create new composite applications and interactive front-ends to existing software.
RIA 2.0: It's compelling, relatively risk free, and on the standards bandwagon
The reality with many RIA solutions is that they are not quite AJAX ready -- most still rely on their own unique flavor of technology for running their apps. However, almost all are in the process of moving to AJAX as one of many possible client-side technology solutions. Coupled with their growing support for SOA-based technology, the risk of investing in even a relatively small RIA vendor's products becomes acceptable and the reward for adding client-side interactively and reducing client deployment costs finally becomes attainable.
This emerging combination of AJAX and SOA capabilities in RIA offerings essentially takes RIA to another level -- RIA 2.0. While we are not really advocating the use of the RIA 2.0 term, the reality is that the solutions should be seen -- and marketed -- in a different light than their first-generation relatives. Even though vendors believe they are offering the same solutions they always have, with just some additional technology, they need to promote their RIA 2.0 solutions as brand new and built for the modern computing infrastructure.
Watch Nexaweb and Laszlo to see how RIA 2.0 evolves
Nexaweb Technologies and Laszlo Systems are both veterans of the RIA market. They both managed to convince enough customers to buy into their offerings before the AJAX and SOA infusion took hold. Nexaweb has focused on the corporate market, talking the language of IT (lower cost of deployment, decreased bandwidth requirements, developer friendly tools, etc.) and delivering solutions that were mostly about the benefits of thin-client computing, with the increased interactivity and polish of its UI capabilities as a potential bonus. Laszlo, on the other hand, has aimed at more consumer-centric solutions, and its Flash-based offerings produced slick interfaces that were as good or better than most PC applications.
Now, both companies are leveraging AJAX and SOA and have enhanced their value propositions, enabling them to target their specific markets with a stronger message that touts both hard ROI, such as reduced bandwidth and app deployment costs, and soft ROI, such as the increased usability of client software.