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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 © 2008 gartner inc and/or its affiliates all rights reserved reproduction and distribution of this publication in any form without prior written permission is forbidden the information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable gartner disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy completeness or adequacy of such information although gartner s research may discuss legal issues related to the information technology business gartner does not provide legal advice or services and its research should not be construed or used as such gartner shall have no liability for errors omissions or inadequacies in the information contained herein or for interpretations thereof the opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice.

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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 usercentered 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 diverse groups of players and approaches and plenty of apples vs oranges comparisons possible because of a lack of consensus on features and approaches the argument has been made by some vendors with publication date 29 december 2008/id number g00164266 © 2008 gartner inc and/or its affiliates all rights reserved page 2 of 28

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products in this space that the notion of a cohesive ajax/ria market is an illusion and that this is not a market anymore than there is an html market or an xml market the proposition is that all of these html xml ajax and ria technologies are enabling technologies for one or more distinct markets although this perspective has a certain validity gartner has chosen to do a marketscope in this area because this situation meets two key aspects of a market · · a community of buyers that is willing and able to buy and that may reference each other or alternatively third-party advisors in making a buying decision a community of sellers that competes with each other for buyers attention and commitment the market is at the stage where there is a high degree of fragmentation and diversity not all sellers compete with each other and not all buyers have identical needs nevertheless gartner has received enough inquiries for guidance in product/technology selection and has seen enough competitive face-offs such as adobe flex vs microsoft silverlight or backbase vs nexaweb technologies or ibm lotus expeditor vs javafx or adobe air vs microsoft windows presentation foundation [wpf and .net that the broad outlines of the market are visible within this market are segments such as the fissure between enterprise ria and consumeroriented ajax but this fragmentation is no different than in other early stage markets for example the portal market where initially vendors were strong in external-facing or internalfacing deployments but not both although there are fissures in the market landscape there are enough cross-category competitive face-offs such as a ria platform vs an ajax technology that the market can be considered as cohesive as any other early stage market as the market matures and consolidates a small number of large vendors will grow even larger by encompassing broad-based approaches acquiring smaller vendors and/or taking market share away from second-tier choices as that happens the fault lines that fragment the ajax/ria sector will fade market/market segment description the ajax/ria sector can be segmented in two ways in terms of buyers and in terms of sellers looking at the market in terms of buyers the following categories emerge · enterprise legacy platform replacement enterprises seeking a presentation-centric development platform and toolset that will replace aging or obsolete legacy applications built with earlier generations of tools such as oracle forms powerbuilder and visual basic the needs of this class of buyer center on developer productivity platform compatibility skills compatibility vendor support and vendor longevity public-facing enterprise sites these sites represent the external web presence for global 1000 organizations the need for this class of buyer is for broad reach to a mass audience this is best achieved through browser-independent implementations serverneutral client-side technologies a small client footprint easy update and so on beyond these core requirements there are also the enterprise requirements listed above stand-alone consumer-oriented web sites the top 100 web sites and smaller stand-alone web properties that aspire to be the next facebook or google buyers in this class have strong technical staff and many have built their own ajax frameworks and ria tools their needs are for broad reach and browser independence similar to high-end enterprise sites a key difference is the need for compatibility with server-side · · publication date 29 december 2008/id number g00164266 © 2008 gartner inc and/or its affiliates all rights reserved page 3 of 28

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frameworks often neither .net nor java but instead lamp-based php python or ruby none of which are prevalent in enterprise-scale deployments · independent software vendor isv differentiators isvs have followed the technology shift in the 1990s from client/server to the web and are now seeking to differentiate their offerings from similar web-based competitors compared with the average enterprise the buyers in the isv class have strong in-house engineering staff and mature user-experience design teams and processes these buyers can more easily absorb and exploit ajax and ria technology offerings whether open-source ajax or broad-scope ria platforms to meet the needs of these different market segments or classes of buyers there is a diverse collection of sellers technology vendors quasi vendors and open-source toolkits not affiliated with a conventional vendor the offerings are as follows · community-oriented open-source ajax toolkits these noncommercial free and open-source toolkits include dojo prototype/scriptaculous and jquery they have seen wide adoption primarily outside the enterprise with a significant minority of the top 100 web sites now using one or more of these often as a supplement to custom-built ajax vendor-centered open-source ajax and ria technologies open-source toolkits affiliated with a small commercial vendor such as ext bindows or laszlo systems the vendor is usually targeting the enterprise sector because the top 100 web sites rely on custom-built technologies or open source commercial ajax and ria product offerings these started out as closed-source packages targeted toward the enterprise market they often still remain that way but some have since become open source at least in part tibco general interface gi is a prime example laszlo is one of the earliest adobe is a more recent entrant in that it has open-sourced its flex sdk but not its flex builder tool microsoft has opensourced its ajax library and silverlight toolkit broad-scope ria platform plays offerings from adobe microsoft ibm sun and to a lesser extent nexaweb software ag and tibco software these enterprise-oriented vendors offer industrial-strength platforms and tools that go beyond basic ajax capability market adoption of ria frameworks has been low due to the emerging stage of market evolution as well as in some cases to the immaturity of the technology nonproduct offerings from commercial vendors technology packages from commercial vendors that are released as open-source or free software not as a product and no plans to productize such as adobe spry yahoo user interface yui google web toolkit gwt and microsoft ajax library formerly codenamed atlas collections of visual components morphing into frameworks these come from a group of small but long-lived vendors of aftermarket components offerings may be delivered with source code but the licenses are not open source vendors include infragistics devexpress componentart dundas data visualization componentone softwarefx and others these vendors offer a mix of horizontal infrastructure enhancements add-on components for wpf and java stand-alone frameworks competing directly with ajax and ria frameworks and vertical microproducts geographic information system [gis and charting components · · · · · publication date 29 december 2008/id number g00164266 © 2008 gartner inc and/or its affiliates all rights reserved page 4 of 28

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inclusion and exclusion criteria a marketscope is intended to address the needs of gartner customers in evaluating product offerings and vendor relationships in an early to midstage market a market as stated earlier is a community of buyers and sellers an implication of the term community is that many of the participants although by no means all of the participants or even necessarily a majority are aware of each other and often use that knowledge in formulating buy-side decisions as well as sell-side competitive strategies the aspects of a market therefore include buyers sellers decisions information about products and services and ultimately transactions that have an economic aspect where economic value is used in the broadest sense of an incentive reward or medium of exchange markets that have a significant mix of open-source offerings function not just through the mechanism of monetary exchange but also through the economics of recognition trust and nonmonetary incentives because of the mix of ajax and ria products and technologies this marketscope includes many offerings that are not commercial products so there are alternative inclusion criteria that reflect the reality of market decisions that prospective organizations are choosing from among · · · · · ria platforms such as adobe flash/flex microsoft silverlight or ibm expeditor free nonproduct offerings from commercial web giants such as gwt yui microsoft ajax library or adobe spry community-based open-source packages such as jquery or prototype vendor-centric open source such as ext commercial products from ria specialist vendors such as backbase or nexaweb the criteria must be a mix of traditional and nontraditional attributes which include · · · · · revenue ajax or ria-related annual revenue of at least $5 million geographic presence offices in more than one region such as north america asia or europe vendor presence stability and longevity market acceptance in one more of the following sectors top 100 web sites global 1000 companies web 2.0 startup ventures isvs and system integrators ecosystem activity as evidenced by marketplaces aftermarket offerings community forums books seminars and partner and channel activity it services firms system integrators distributors web interactive agencies and advisory firms gartner client interest indicators of interest by gartner end-user clients include the number of inquiries to analysts via the gartner call center or at gartner conferences via one-on-ones · these criteria allow apples and oranges to be included such as commercial products from enterprise-oriented vendors as well as nonproduct offerings and community-based open source the marketscope therefore includes packages such as · backbase which is a company with more than $10 million in revenue market acceptance in enterprise deployments and partners page 5 of 28 publication date 29 december 2008/id number g00164266 © 2008 gartner inc and/or its affiliates all rights reserved.

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· · jquery which is a community-based open source in use by the top 100 web sites and the subject of technical books available in mainstream bookstores infragistics and magic software which are enterprise-oriented vendors with more than 10 years in the market and about which gartner clients have posted inquiries the inclusion criteria were analyzed in a spreadsheet with a dozen attributes such as vendor strength ria-related revenue vendor longevity and partners market share among enterprises isvs high-end web sites and web 2.0 ventures and product attributes gartner client interest product features and ecosystem activity points were allotted based on strength in these attributes and vendors or offerings that exceeded a composite threshold value were included there are numerous vendors that did not meet the inclusion ranking threshold appendix a provides a comprehensive list of vendors in this space examples of vendors and offerings that are not included in this marketscope analysis include bindows jmaki softwarefx dundas ajs echo2 and mootools rating for overall market/market segment overall market rating promising although the market has been around since the first commercial products were introduced in 2002 and 2003 it is still in the relatively early stages of evolution especially with regard to the market segment relating to enterprise ria platforms this enterprise ria segment is a key aspect of this marketscope because it is of primary interest to gartner clients and because it has strong economic implications that will drive the rest of the market over time therefore it is important to understand what is meant by enterprise ria platform market segment a key aspect of defining this segment is the idea of significant platform commitment as opposed to pilot projects or one of a kind tactical projects tactical projects are much more numerous than the strategic platform commitments the market has gone through various phases which gartner identifies as follows · · 1998 through 2002 embryonic phase demonstrations of technology such as desktop.com but no commercial products 2002 through 2004 nascent phase a handful of products introduced by pioneering vendors such as backbase general interface jackbe laszlo systems and macromedia 2004 through 2008 the early adopter phase which can be broken down further · · 2004 through 2006 the year of ajax which turns out to be about 24 months in length in which more than 100 open-source toolkits proliferate 2007 through 2008 the year of adobe flex about 18 months in length in which flex gains dominant share among early adopters in the enterprise ria segment · · 2009 through 2012 the early majority phase enterprises make strategic commitments to ajax and ria technologies mostly through extensions to server-side platforms such as .net java lamp and cloud-based platforms gartner estimates that the majority of global 1000 companies have experimented with ajax or ria technologies from more than one vendor these include technologies such as ajax on the publication date 29 december 2008/id number g00164266 © 2008 gartner inc and/or its affiliates all rights reserved page 6 of 28

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one hand and wpf on the other and adobe flex and microsoft silverlight in the middle there are about 150 or more vendors and toolkits covering the broad spectrum of technology choices which range from lightweight ajax to extended-browser flash java and silverlight to outsidethe-browser air wpf expeditor and javafx however in terms of market adoption very few organizations have made a strategic platform commitment note that a platform commitment does not have to be an enterprisewide monoculture it just has to go beyond a single isolated project most large enterprises have more than one platform in place that is both java ee and .net even for nonlegacy projects also note that the depth of technology use can vary within an implementation from a superficial coat of ajax paint to bone-deep rip-and-replace with ria a marketscope is a lens intended to provide as clear a view as possible of a market landscape to the average gartner client however the nature of the task is such that to the extent that an organization differs from the norm the lens will represent a distorted view or alternatively one can say that each organization needs its own level of astigmatic correction to reflect its priorities more specifically an organization that is heavily aligned with one vendor or another will view the market through a lens that is microsoft-centric ibm-centric or oracle-centric and so on gartner has observed that in practice large organizations tend to have multiple vendor alignments despite nominal allegiance to one primary vendor a second challenge in this process is that the marketscope lens is focused on vendors not on products for the case of smaller vendors the vendor-centric view aligns perfectly with a perspective centered on products however larger vendors offer more than one product microsoft is the extreme example here with many significant choices of products and technologies that relate to the presentation aspects of an application from wpf to asp.net ajax to silverlight plus a half-dozen other choices adobe also has multiple offerings ranging from open-source spry to flex to air other vendors such as oracle and ibm are in a similar situation there are also vendors that started out with ajax or ria offerings but have since shifted market emphasis to some other product category for example jackbe and laszlo but still market their original products this marketscope only has single entries for each vendor in the case of multiple products the evaluation aggregates the product mix and gives proportionately greater emphasis to the package that is of core interest to gartner clients that are end-user organizations gartner clients that are accustomed to magic quadrants and not marketscopes should note that marketscopes present results in a coarse-grained one-dimensional ranking level 1 through level 5 which are labeled strong negative caution promising positive and strong positive this is different than the high-resolution two-dimensional positioning in a magic quadrant the marketscope labels may not capture the nuance of a vendor s ranking including the important notion of directional movement to illustrate two hypothetical vendors ranked at the midpoint in the scale level 3 both carry the label promising but in one case the vendor has declined from level 5 and the other has ascended from level 1 also the coarse-grained ladder consists of only five steps which might obscure the fact that a vendor near the top of one level may have more in common with vendors at the next level than with lower-ranked vendors in the same level due to truncating high-resolution numerical analysis to fit low-resolution buckets therefore it is important to consider all aspects of a vendor s evaluation · · · the written description and analysis of each vendor the bulleted items listing positive and negative attributes the ranking level publication date 29 december 2008/id number g00164266 © 2008 gartner inc and/or its affiliates all rights reserved page 7 of 28

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evaluation criteria table 1 evaluation criteria evaluation criteria product/service comment core goods and services offered by the vendor that compete in/serve the defined market this includes current product/service capabilities quality feature sets and skills whether offered natively or through oem agreements/partnerships the vendor s approach to product development and delivery that emphasizes differentiation functionality methodology and feature sets as they map to current and future requirements viability includes an assessment of the overall organization s financial health the financial and practical success of the business unit and the likelihood that the individual business unit will continue investing in the product will continue offering the product and will advance the state of the art within the organization s portfolio of products the vendor s capabilities in all presales activities and the structure that supports them this includes deal management pricing and negotiation presales support and the overall effectiveness of the sales channel ability to respond change direction be flexible and achieve competitive success as opportunities develop competitors act customer needs evolve and market dynamics change this criterion also considers the vendor s history of responsiveness resonance with the market in key segments such as enterprise top 100 web sites web 2.0 ventures and isvs as well as ecosystem activity and market interest weighting high offering product strategy standard overall viability business unit financial strategy organization standard sales execution/pricing low market responsiveness and track record standard market understanding high source gartner december 2008 publication date 29 december 2008/id number g00164266 © 2008 gartner inc and/or its affiliates all rights reserved page 8 of 28

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under the category of market understanding are some subordinate criteria which are outlined in table 2 table 2 additional evaluation criteria evaluation criteria market adoption comment market presence and market traction in key segments such as enterprise sectors top 100 web sites web 2.0 startup ventures and isvs developer community resources for support and training marketplaces for goods and services books published by mainstream trade press blog commentary and so on inquiries posted to gartner by end-user organizations references and positioning by competitors direction should align with gartner s view of evolving market requirements including areas such as declarative specification of layout and behavior code refactoring and maintenance tools designer/developer workflow integration with serverside platforms interoperability with tools and platforms and so on weighting high ecosystem activity high market interest standard technology architecture and road map standard source gartner december 2008 publication date 29 december 2008/id number g00164266 © 2008 gartner inc and/or its affiliates all rights reserved page 9 of 28

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figure 1 marketscope for ajax technology and ria platforms rating strong caution promising negative adobe backbase curl devexpress dojo ext google ibm infragistics jackbe jquery laszlo systems magic software enterprises microsoft nexaweb technologies oracle prototype sun microsystems tibco software yahoo as of 23 december 2008 source gartner december 2008 positive strong positive xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx vendor product/service analysis adobe adobe has multiple presentation-related technologies tools and platforms that gartner clients consider and evaluate including adobe flash which can be used by itself and underlies adobe s flex platform adobe spry lightweight open-source ajax toolkit adobe flex inside-the-browser ria built on a flash platform adobe air outside-the-browser ria that also leverages flash as well as complementary server-side technologies such as livecycle data services adobe s rating in this marketscope incorporates all of these to varying degrees but largely centers on the core flex product line based in san jose ca with $3.5 billion in revenue and 6,000 employees adobe is best known for its products adobe photoshop acrobat premiere and illustrator that focus on the needs of creative and multimedia professionals adobe acquired macromedia in 2005 and incorporated its flagship products and technologies such as flash dreamweaver and flex into the adobe line adobe flex released initially in 2004 represents the evolution of the flash platform into the enterprise and isv sector flex 3 is the third generation of this ria platform released in february 2008 along with adobe s outside-the-browser technology known as air adobe has announced that flex 4 codenamed gumbo now in beta is scheduled for release in 2009 positives publication date 29 december 2008/id number g00164266 © 2008 gartner inc and/or its affiliates all rights reserved page 10 of 28

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· · · · adobe s flex product line is modern new technology as well as mature it has a track record of successful deployments in enterprises public sites and isv product offerings adobe is not too small that is it s not vulnerable to downturns in a single product line but not too large it s still agile enough to meet dynamic market requirements the technology is not too heavy it still fits inside a browser with a small footprint but not too light it is more powerful than ajax adobe has dominant market share in the emerging category of enterprise-oriented ria frameworks as well as a strong presence among the isv and top 100 web sectors partnerships with isvs include large powerhouse vendors such as sap as well as smaller more vertically focused vendors adobe s technology is largely independent of server-side platforms this aspect can also be a negative depending on the context adobe has a recognized brand name and a good reputation in the web and design fields although not so much in enterprise-class software · · negatives · although adobe is not a small vendor it is smaller in capitalization resources and channels than web giants such as google and it giants such as microsoft ibm oracle and sap it is therefore vulnerable to direct competition and possible acquisition adobe technology is largely server-independent which is a negative for some organizations that want a homogeneous platform that is a more tightly integrated blend of server and client-side technology there is sufficient affinity with the java platform however which tempers this negative in that context despite broad market acceptance for adobe flagship products and technologies such as adobe reader and flash the company lacks a significant market presence in big it that is centralized it infrastructures although flash is pervasive and flex leverages standards such as javascript the standardized version known as ecmascript enterprise developers with skills in the aggregate flex and flash platform are not numerous · · · rating strong positive backbase backbase is one of the pioneering vendors in the commercial ajax sector founded in 2003 the company has over the years evolved a mature and powerful ajax framework that includes a library of client-side controls a visual development tool and server-side integration on top of this backbase offers add-on products for portal-centric solutions rich web forms and collaborative scenarios the company s marketing emphasis is on external-facing scenarios such as selfservice and e-commerce web sites that need to have a broad reach and a high user experience impact positives · backbase has a well-designed full-featured closed-source product range targeted for the enterprise sector and for public sites online self-service and e-commerce publication date 29 december 2008/id number g00164266 © 2008 gartner inc and/or its affiliates all rights reserved page 11 of 28

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· · it s a small agile vendor that understands the market backbase has achieved a certain track record and market penetration in the enterprise sector as well as among public sites compared with other closed-source alternatives negatives · backbase s commercial product is at a disadvantage in certain scenarios when competing with free open-source commodity packages especially those with commercial support available it s a small vendor with limited resources and limited brand recognition · rating positive curl founded in 1998 in cambridge ma curl was acquired by japan-based sumisho computer systems the curl ria platform was released in 2002 and has been marketed mostly in japan until 2007 when the ria product was launched in north america the technology approach was initially based on a browser plug-in for the company s lisp-like proprietary language and framework analogous to adobe flash sun java and microsoft silverlight browser plug-ins early in 2008 the company announced curl nitro an outside-the-browser ria platform analogous to adobe air sun javafx and microsoft wpf curl applications can be compiled to the native hardware and can then communicate with a browser via plug-in or directly to native windows the client-side runtime is cross-platform windows mac and linux it supports secure access to client-side data and web service protocols for server-side data access as well as offline operation curl applications are written in a lisp-like language enhanced with html presentation and object-oriented structure curl offers a stand-alone integrated development environment and a plug-in for the eclipse developer environment positives · · · · curl goes beyond the limitations of ajax through a browser extension and desktopbased runtime it leverages the powerful and dynamic lisp-like language curl is a subsidiary of a major vendor it s deployed in 400 enterprises negatives · · · curl has little market penetration outside the japanese market the company s proprietary language and environment are barriers for the average developer curl has limited visibility as compared with large players such as microsoft adobe ibm oracle and sun rating promising publication date 29 december 2008/id number g00164266 © 2008 gartner inc and/or its affiliates all rights reserved page 12 of 28

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devexpress devexpress was founded in 1998 to serve the borland delphi and c aftermarket it has since become a key player in a cluster of aftermarket vendors that sell visual and business components for microsoft-related presentation platforms such as wpf asp.net and windows forms devexpress competes directly with infragistics a vendor that is also covered in this marketscope as well as with other vendors in this market niche such as componentone dundas telerik janus softwarefx xceed data dynamics sharp library component art divelements springsource and syncfusion many of these companies play a complementary role to their host platforms by filling in the gaps in the control sets for silverlight windows forms and others devexpress differentiates itself from competitors in that it provides xaf which is a cross-platform application framework that can target windows forms and asp.net and in the future wpf as well as coderush an ide productivity and code refactoring tool that improves developer efficiency inside microsoft s visual studio although xaf competes with microsoft the bulk of the product line is complementary devexpress is in the process of porting its entire range of business presentation controls to the silverlight platform including its rich text editor and user interface layout and management component positives · · · devexpress has a solid line of components and a framework that allows developers to develop browser-based and outside-the-browser applications it is a small vendor that has survived for a long time in the shadow of microsoft devexpress has a loyal customer base that adopts component products on a tactical basis negatives · · devexpress is a small company in a crowded aftermarket sector and its frameworklevel product now competes more directly with microsoft customers view the company s products as tactical and complementary rather than strategic and self-contained rating promising dojo dojo is a pioneer in the category of community-based open-source ajax toolkits it was created in 2004 by a collection of individuals associated with informatica jotspot and renkoo the toolkit is available under a berkeley software distribution bsd or an afl license and is the most influential ajax package by virtue of its early entrance into the sector the community that rose around it and by the support of major vendors such as ibm oracle bea systems when it was independent sun and laszlo systems the dojo toolkit now consists of a layered portfolio of technologies starting with a 26-kilobyte core that provides an event model and object model and facilities for animation communication and debugging on this core is dijit a component framework and library of user controls menus trees and calendars lastly is dojox an extensibility mechanism that supports server push comet offline mode google gears a unified vector drawing model and third-party extensions such as dojo.e from nexaweb the dojo portfolio includes support for accessibility internationalization and some performance management capabilities publication date 29 december 2008/id number g00164266 © 2008 gartner inc and/or its affiliates all rights reserved page 13 of 28

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dojo s most direct competitors are other leading community-based open-source packages such as prototype/scriptaculous jquery and yui an important differentiator for dojo is its package system and build tools which support large-scale teams as in enterprise development projects building voluminous code bases over time positives · · · · · dojo has an early position a strong influence and high visibility in the category of opensource ajax support from major vendors including ibm and oracle is a plus for dojo and the company is a corporatewide standard at ibm supported across 30 products dojo s early adoption among and good track record with some major sites such as aol mail and mapquest as well as among some web 2.0 ventures are positives dojo s package system enables code bases to scale in size dojo foundation also supports other projects such as cometd open record and direct web remoting dwr negatives · · an early perception among some developers that dojo 0.4 was undocumented complex and slow still lingers despite refactoring and optimization in version 1.2 there is no single vendor that is strategically committed to the success of this project an attribute that can also be viewed as a positive however ibm is a strategic player that can sustain dojo during the short term and midterm there is a perception of slowed momentum relative to newer toolkits such as jquery and mootools · rating positive ext extjs is a javascript library that began as an extension to yui toolkit and was initially named yui-ext then simply ext and now extjs the author of extjs jack slocum is chief architect at the company a commercial venture founded in 2006 around this javascript library the package is available under a commercial license or under the gpl v.3 license the package has seen strong growth in adoption since its release in 2006 and has made inroads in the enterprise sector the extjs site has close to 60,000 registered members which has roughly doubled during the past six months and the company says it has 6,000 customers ext recently introduced extgwt a separate product that adds on to the capabilities in gwt positives · ext s library has a good reputation for the quality of its widgets which were initially a supplement to yui but are now self-contained and can optionally interoperate with other ajax frameworks ext is a commercial vendor with awareness of enterprise needs and an application life cycle that is gaining visibility and market traction in the enterprise sector · negatives publication date 29 december 2008/id number g00164266 © 2008 gartner inc and/or its affiliates all rights reserved page 14 of 28

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· · · ext is a small vendor competing with commoditized open-source toolkits that have thriving communities thus far adoption is mostly centered on the enterprise sector which can also be viewed as a positive the company has been criticized for multiple changes to its license from bsd to gnu lesser general public license lgpl to modified lgpl to gnu general public license version 3 gpl3 which some observers think is too restrictive and results in unwanted viral effect however there are enterprises that won t choose open source in any form and instead prefer a commercial license rating promising google google is one of the web s largest and best-known companies with more than 20,000 employees and $20 billion in annual revenue in the ajax/ria space google offers google web toolkit gwt a tool intended to leverage the skills of server-side java programmers who don t know javascript a very different language than java developers write code in java which gets translated by the system to javascript for client-side deployment google has built sophisticated technology to allow developers to debug and profile at the java source level without having to descend to inspecting machine-generated javascript code gwt is mostly server and ideneutral allowing java developers to work with their favorite integrated development environment gwt does not leverage user interface libraries such as swing standard widget toolkit swt or javaserver faces jsf positives · · · this is a well-crafted ajax toolkit for the java-centric developer it leverages the google brand and ecosystem as well as perceived vendor stability and longevity the google toolkit has matured in scope and power since its release in 2006 negatives · · · · the company s java focus is neutral not compelling to web 2.0 developers google itself does not use gwt for major products maps mail and apps partly because they predate gwt and also because they are written in non-java languages the google brand is positive but not compelling to enterprise developers gwt sidesteps major trends in the java platform such as jsf rating promising ibm ibm along with microsoft is one of the largest and most influential vendors in the broad it sector like microsoft ibm has been projecting a marketing message for years around the concept of rich client or smart client like microsoft ibm has a range of presentation-related technologies and platforms although the choices as packaged for the ajax/ria buyer are not as numerous as those from microsoft ibm was an early force behind ajax dojo and the openajax alliance likewise ibm has adopted ajax techniques in its websphere portal and websphere commerce publication date 29 december 2008/id number g00164266 © 2008 gartner inc and/or its affiliates all rights reserved page 15 of 28

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