MarketScope for Ajax Technology and RIA Platforms

Research
Publication Date: 29 December 2008 ID Number: G00164266
MarketScope for Ajax Technology and RIA Platforms
Ray Valdes
Despite having appeared as early as 1999, Ajax technologies and rich Internet application platforms are still in a dynamic and early adopter phase of market evolution, with respect to enterprise-level adoption.
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WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
. Ajax is as much know-how and technique as it is a technology. It is a way of building applications that leverage the capabilities already built into every modern browser. . Rich Internet application (RIA) technology can be a stand-alone platform that is usually integrated with existing application development platforms, or an extension to an existing server-centric platform. . Ajax is pervasive in the consumer space of public, high-end Web sites, but its adoption in a strategic manner by the enterprise sector is still low, limited to the most technologically aggressive early adopter organizations. . Most enterprises are not early adopters, and remain in the wait-and-see stage, holding off until technologies mature and until their preferred large IT vendor (be it Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, SAP or Sun Microsystems) delivers a technology that is "digestible" (that is, able to be absorbed by the current IT staff, skill set and technology environment). . Success in Ajax and RIA deployments depends more on a user-centered design/development process than on the choice of technology.
MARKETSCOPE
Defining the Ajax and RIA Market The Ajax/RIA sector, broadly speaking, is a set of technology offerings oriented to meeting the needs of application development teams to build systems that deliver a rich and responsive user experience. The focus of buyers in this market is on technology, despite Gartner's long-standing advice that success in presentation-oriented development projects results more from a user-centered design process than from adding a new layer of technology. In the Ajax/RIA sector, the focus of buyers is not just technology, but technology that is different from the server-centric platforms to which they are accustomed. The need, as perceived by prospective buyers in this market, is often not precisely articulated, but is generally for a tool, technology or platform that delivers a "better" user experience. In this context, "better" refers to an experience that is visibly different than what's produced by the existing platforms, which have resulted in legacy applications that are perceived to be drab and difficult to use. What the typical organization seeks to replace is a legacy platform - either client/server (such as PowerBuilder, Visual Basic or Oracle Forms) or Web (plain HTML with "islands of interactivity" based on Flash, Java or ActiveX). Unfortunately, all too often, adding new technology to an organization that has a dysfunctional process results in a degraded, rather than improved, user experience. The eventual result is often not known, because having an immature process means that appropriate metrics are not collected. Therefore, the organization cannot determine whether there is an improvement in the effectiveness of the user experience. The case can be made that organizations would get better results by focusing on a better design process or on more-effective use of the presentation capabilities already included in mainstream server-side platforms, which have evolved to include Ajax and RIA features. That is beyond the scope of this research, which focuses on an emerging, but cohesive, set of buyers and sellers that comprises the Ajax/RIA market. As is characteristic of any emerging markets, there are often di... [download for more]