Business caseadobeflashflex

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Saltmarchi White Paper

A Business Case for
Using Adobe Flex and
the Adobe Flash Platform

www. saltmarchi.com

A Business Case for Using Adobe Flex and Adobe Flash Platform

Introduction
Usage of new technologies, collectively dubbed Web 2.0, has
improved the richness of interaction on the Web. From games For NASDAQ, Adobe
on social networking websites to analytics applications, all now Flex and Adobe AIR
delivered extreme returns
boast of presence-rich content -- custom designed interfaces in in developing Market
a highly branded and expressive visual environment that use Replay. By leveraging
sounds, video, graphics and motion. off-the-shelf Flex
software components and
building a powerful
This improved user friendliness has brought out the consumer desktop application for
in droves, clamoring to sign up for the latest social game and data analysis using
Adobe AIR, NASDAQ can
adopt e-commerce solutions like never before. Recent reports run Market Replay using
suggest social gaming in the US alone will be a $1 billion an incredibly lightweight
market in 2011 and the virtual goods market alone has soared IT infrastructure. Without
the support of Adobe AIR
245 percent to $7.3 billion in 2011 from $2.1 billion in 2007. to put the analytical
functions of Market
Enterprises have been trying to figure out how to fill the Replay on the desktop,
we could not have built
engagement gap for their corporate applications. They realize such a low-cost ,
that all applications, all software, need to value user experience assessable product
and the connected world. Consumers -- whether customers, because of the back-end
hardware investment that
investors, or employees -- who experience rich media and would have been
interactive content, as well as using online applications for required. Adobe Flex and
Adobe AIR literally made
shopping, editing documents and photos, sending email, etc – Market Replay Possible.
are often put off by 'enterprise' systems whose user experience
NASDAQ
often fail to equal those they use in their personal lives.
Consumers are demanding a higher level of application
usability and productivity from corporate applications.

Page | 02 www.saltmarchi.com


Enter RIAction
Rich Internet Application (RIA) platforms are solving this Businesses that employ
issue for corporate applications. Internally, RIAs: well-designed
Ÿ work well in situations where line-of-business (LOB) customer-facing RIAs
applications need to be deployed quickly and maintained can see:
constantly Ÿ Increase in online
Ÿ have a small footprint and can be delivered via a Web sales up to 30%*
server or an application server on the company network
Ÿ Increase in
Ÿ allow for a multiple delivery approach, over a wide conversions, cross-
variety of connections from the LAN to the Web and channel sales and up-
even via CD or DVD
sells by up to 40%*
Internal corporate RIAs help to: Ÿ Reduce contact
center/telephone
Ÿ Gather key data from varied sources
agent calls up to 20%
Ÿ Increase employee productivity
annually*
Ÿ Reduce data entry time up to 40%
Ÿ Improve accuracy
Ÿ Save time
Ÿ Reduce operating expenses

In an Economist Intelligence Unit survey, conducted on behalf
of Adobe, 80% of executives agree that better engagement
translates into improved customer loyalty, and 75% said they
believed it meant higher profits. Companies that built external
customer-facing RIAs are seeing it encourages users to:
Ÿ Stay on the web site longer: the Adobe Flash Player
runtime reaches 98% of Internet-enabled desktops and
more than 450 million devices, offering businesses
greater reach than with any other client technology
available. Couple that with a RIA and the user enjoys a
meticulous, appealing interface with different functional
characteristics.


Ÿ Explore more options, spend more money: because of increased functionality,
people tend to spend more time on a web site, increasing chances of them
converting into being customers. For example, the worldwide virtual goods
market, led by Asia, is estimated at about $7 billion.
Ÿ Complete more online transactions: online transactions are more convenient
because there is no need to switch over pages.
Ÿ Recommend the site to others: engagement is critical to transforming
customers into active advocates for brands and businesses; studies find that 79%
of engaged customers will recommend products and services to others.
Ÿ Return more often: since RIAs build brand value by making customer's
interaction with the brand a more valuable, productive and pleasant encounter
they will be more loyal, and return and pay up more money to the e-tailer

Figure 1: Customer Implementations**

NASDAQ Market Replay

NASDAQ used the Adobe® AIR® runtime, the open source Flex framework, and Amazon S3 to create and deploy Market Replay
application. The application enables investors and brokers to replay market events and review historical data in simulated real time.
Benefits gained:
Ÿ It made building the application economically viable
Ÿ The ability to process data on the desktop enhanced responsiveness and lowered costs.
Ÿ A familiar, object-oriented development framework accelerated development.
Ÿ Easy integration with Amazon S3 offered an inexpensive, scalable, reliable, and fast data storage infrastructure.
Ÿ Using the Adobe Flash® Platform made the application compelling enough to be offered as a retail product; it was initially
conceived as only a regulatory tool.



Business Benefits Offered by RIA
RIAs bring together the best of client-server and web technology. They can be viewed
as web applications combined with the features and functionality of traditional desktop
applications. Consumers are now gravitating towards applications that are simple, fast,
usable and intuitive. Moving forward RIAs will become a de facto requirement any
business that hopes to gain and retain customers. If users find a Web site difficult to
use, they will switch to one that isn't. RIA offers the following benefits to businesses.

Improved
decision making
Increased Reduced
order sizes Improved customer loyalty,
costs
increased up-sell

Reduced errors Reduced overall
and workarounds operational cost

Increase in Improved employee productivity,
reduced training time
new customers

Ÿ Increased order sizes: since RIAs offer a simple, personalized, highly
responsive and consistent user experience, it reduces user frustration and shopping
cart abandonment, converting them to buying online and placing larger orders.
Ÿ Improved decision making: RIAs aggregate relevant, timely, highly visual
analytics with supporting data, making it easier for the end user to understand the
information in context, with greater depth and speed and thereby enhancing the
quality of the decision making process.
Ÿ Improved customer loyalty, increased up-sell: RIAs offer a sophisticated
online experience. For instance, when offering customizable add-ons to basic
products, a well-designed RIA can help the user visualize his options, understand
the value of the add-on and customize the order in a simple manner. For businesses,



large margins on the add-ons maximized revenues. Further,
existing users find it easier to manage their account
information, check order and re-order status and so on,
which improves their retention rate and drives up revenue
streams.
Ÿ Increase in new customers: customers who are
increasingly Internet savvy and the Web is now the first
point of interface for potential customers. They are better
convinced through detailed, yet easy to digest sense of With Flex, complex
product features and benefits with video, audio and data sets can be
interactive presentations, than typical sales hype. Providing presented simply and
an easy-to-use application will enhance user productivity visually, reducing the
cycle time to decision-
and satisfaction and convert Web surfers into Web buyers. making or providing a
Ÿ Reduced overall operational cost: RIA optimizes significant enhancement
to the overall user
bandwidth usage by fetching only required data. Further, experience. This RIA
moving the processing to the Web browser reduces server approach offers business
load. For the end user this creates a more effective, seamless managers valuable
insight into business
experience. performance — whether
Ÿ Reduced errors and workarounds: users often tend to it be sales, portfolio
management, customer
be confused with process-oriented applications. RIAs offer a views, or operational
visually supportive experience so the user can access metrics.
processes he requires, increasing the response time and IBM Global Services
reducing error rates and the need for rework.
Ÿ Reduced costs: if the web site is not user-friendly and
prevents the user from completing a sale or placing a
customer service request, they will pick up the phone with a
contact center thereby loading up the cost of the transaction.
RIA's higher usability and visual interactivity helps to
reduce support calls significantly.
Ÿ Improved employee productivity, reduced training
time: RIAs are simpler to understand and do not require
extensive user training manuals. Further, using RIA reduces
the number of server round-trips, saves time and reduced
server responses -- cutting down the server lag improves the
employee's concentration and, thereby, performance.



RIA Technologies
RIAs add value rather than complexity, combining the best of Web and desktop
applications. Adobe's RIA solutions are suitable for businesses looking to completely
transform their Web experiences. Flex, Flash, and AIR are extremely powerful
solutions for building engaging, next-generation RIAs. The Adobe Flash platform is an
integrated solution that enables designers and developers to easily work together to
build and deploy enterprise RIAs that enable more effective interaction. Firms must
also acquire the skills necessary to use Flex, which is the development framework for
the Flash runtime environment.

Figure 2: Customer Implementations**

Playfish Bowling Buddies

Ÿ Five of the ten most popular games on Facebook is built by Playfish. One of these games "Bowling Buddies" features stylish 3D
graphics, easy controls, customized characters, and multiplayer challenges. Benefits gained:
Ÿ The broad reach of the Adobe® Flash® Player runtime enables single-click access for millions of new users without requiring a
plug-in installation.
Ÿ The superior design and development tools enabled development of a rich, interactive game.
Ÿ The Flash Platform supports integration with Facebook, MySpace, and other social networks.
Ÿ The Flash Platform facilitates rapid development and a faster time to market.



Why Flex is Worth Your Money
Following is a comparison of Flex with competing
technologies: Flex vs..
Flex and Microsoft Silverlight Microsoft Silverlight
Silverlight is Microsoft's proprietary RIA technology. The Java FX
tool set is fairly competent and .NET developers will already AJAX
know the language in which to code. Silverlight still lags in HTML5
penetrations as compared to Adobe tools. The numbers of Flash
third party Flex components are increasing quickly with
contributions from the open source community.

Flex 2 and RIAs
Flex and Java FX support our goals of
The user base for Java FX is very small. It also lags behind in building and designing
rich media experiences
font and 3D support. Flex applications use the Flash player that reshape how users
like a virtual machine for Flex applications. Java developers experience content. At
can, by way of the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), use Java as MTV, we reinvented the
the backend and use the more popular Flash for the frontend. look and feel of television
— now we're doing the
Java developers familiar with Eclipse will also find it easy to same thing with user
work with Adobe Flex builder as it is based on Eclipse. experiences on the web.
Flex 2 delivers essential
elements for creating and
maintaining web services
Flex and AJAX — better developer
AJAX is the de-facto standard for developing RIAs amongst productivity, an expanded
HTML developers. AJAX has a reasonable set of libraries set of powerful tools,
easily scalable
and working with Ajax is no longer as difficult as it used to applications, and a
be. But compatibility issues can be a serious annoyance. All consistent, reliable
said, since Flex is a framework it makes it easier to write and framework. Combined,
these capabilities help us
maintain code compared to writing code in Ajax.
extend our position as a
leader in delivering
compelling, interactive
Flex and HTML5 digital content."
HTML 5 is the next generation of HTML with native support MTV Networks
for video and vector graphics. Over time, HTML5 will be a
force in RIA. But browser makers are notorious at abiding by


standards, so it remains to be seen how soon this will develop. In the meanwhile,
Adobe has begun to incorporate HTML 5 support in its products.

Flex and Flash
Everything that can be done in Flex can be done in Flash too. However, Flex makes it
faster to do them because it offers application developers a set of libraries to develop
code quicker. Adobe Flex is a more flexible development framework with support for
easily moving data around, styling and skinning, advance controls for interactivity and
so on. Flex has the most complete solutions and offers an open source SDK, a robust
Eclipse-based IDE, rich set of data visualization components and comprehensive data
services.

Figure 3

Primary RIA Platform used for Deployed Applications

Dojo Toolkit
Adobe Flex Adobe Flex 20%

The Dojo Foundation Dojo Toolkit 12%
GWT
Google Web Toolkit (GWT) 14%

Eclipse Rich Ajax Platform (RAP) 4%

Microsoft Silverlight 5%

Ext JS 4%

jQuery 3%

In house/custom 12%

Other OSS Ajax 15%

None - I'm not using any frameworks 9%

in house/custom other OSS Ajax Don't know 1%

Source: Saltmarch Intelligence Software Developer Survey 2011



Figure 4

Developer's [Employee] Pick
Choice of RIA Technology Richness of User Interface

Flex Flex

Silverlight Silverlight

JavaFx JavaFx

Look and Feel (out of the box) Cost for Developers

Flex Flex


JavaFx JavaFx

Programming Language UI/Layout Language

Flex Flex


JavaFx JavaFx

Learning Curve for Developers What did you Choose
for your projects?
Flex Flex


JavaFx JavaFx
Source: Saltmarch Intelligence Software Developer Survey 2011



Conclusion
The last few years have seen unprecedented growth in RIA
adoption — especially by Fortune 500 companies. RIA
Compared to other
combines the goodness of instant Web access to centralized development platforms
data to create a user experience that is both easy to use and like Java, such complex
enjoyable. Companies like NASDAQ that need to run high-use, and dynamic Adobe Flex
high-volume applications that communicate in real-time and applications are much
easier to integrate and
complete transactions in milliseconds are increasingly turning more efficient to
to use Adobe's Flex technology for the front-end and couple maintain. This new
that with a rich back-end; for details of NASDAQ's RIA solution offers our
customers significant
application see the box Customer Implementations. trading advantages.
This document has attempted to summarize Adobe Flex and the
Flash Platform as a mature and evolving ecosystem, well suited E*TRADE Germany
to your organization's RIA projects. Adobe solutions will
enable your organization to beat the competition and deliver
successful performance.

Links & Literature
[1] * Survey conducted on behalf of Adobe
[2] ** http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/customers/saying.html
[3] http://www.adobe.com/flashplatform/benefits/
[4] http://www.adobe.com/flashplatform/.../95012113_enterpriseria_wp_ue.pdf
[5] http://vator.tv/news/2010-11-17-virtual-goods-a-73-billion-market


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