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S a l t m a r c h i W h i t e P a p e r

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

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Introduction

Usage of new technologies, collectively dubbed Web 2.0, has

improved the richness of interaction on the Web. From games

on social networking websites to analytics applications, all now

boast of presence-rich content -- custom designed interfaces in

a highly branded and expressive visual environment that use

sounds, video, graphics and motion.

This improved user friendliness has brought out the consumer

in droves, clamoring to sign up for the latest social game and

adopt e-commerce solutions like never before. Recent reports

suggest social gaming in the US alone will be a $1 billion

market in 2011 and the virtual goods market alone has soared

245 percent to $7.3 billion in 2011 from $2.1 billion in 2007.

Enterprises have been trying to figure out how to fill the

engagement gap for their corporate applications. They realize

that all applications, all software, need to value user experience

and the connected world. Consumers -- whether customers,

investors, or employees -- who experience rich media and

interactive content, as well as using online applications for

shopping, editing documents and photos, sending email, etc –

are often put off by 'enterprise' systems whose user experience

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.

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A Business Case for Using Adobe Flex and Adobe Flash Platform

For NASDAQ, Adobe Flex and Adobe AIR delivered extreme returns in developing Market Replay. By leveraging off-the-shelf Flex software components and building a powerful desktop application for data analysis using Adobe AIR, NASDAQ can run Market Replay using an incredibly lightweight IT infrastructure. Without the support of Adobe AIR to put the analytical functions of Market Replay on the desktop, we could not have built such a low-cost , assessable product because of the back-end hardware investment that would have been required. Adobe Flex and Adobe AIR literally made Market Replay Possible.

NASDAQ

Enter RIAction

Rich Internet Application (RIA) platforms are solving this issue for corporate applications. Internally, RIAs:

Ÿ work well in situations where line-of-business (LOB) applications need to be deployed quickly and maintained constantly

Ÿ have a small footprint and can be delivered via a Web server or an application server on the company network

Ÿ allow for a multiple delivery approach, over a wide variety of connections from the LAN to the Web and even via CD or DVD

Internal corporate RIAs help to:

Ÿ Gather key data from varied sources

Ÿ Increase employee productivity

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.



Businesses that employ

well-designed

customer-facing RIAs

can see:

ŸIncrease in online

sales up to 30%*

ŸIncrease in

conversions, cross-

channel sales and up-

sells by up to 40%*

ŸReduce contact

center/telephone

agent calls up to 20%

annually*

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

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.



Figure 1: Customer Implementations**

NASDAQ Market Replay

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.

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,



Increased order sizes

Improved decision making

Improved customer loyalty, increased up-sell

Reduced overall operational cost

Reduced errors and workarounds

Improved employee productivity,reduced training time

Increase in new customers

Reduced costs

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 product features and benefits with video, audio and interactive presentations, than typical sales hype. Providing an easy-to-use application will enhance user productivity and satisfaction and convert Web surfers into Web buyers.

Ÿ Reduced overall operational cost: RIA optimizes bandwidth usage by fetching only required data. Further, moving the processing to the Web browser reduces server load. For the end user this creates a more effective, seamless experience.

Ÿ Reduced errors and workarounds: users often tend to be confused with process-oriented applications. RIAs offer a visually supportive experience so the user can access processes he requires, increasing the response time and 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.



With Flex, complex data sets can be presented simply and visually, reducing the cycle time to decision-making or providing a significant enhancement to the overall user experience. This RIA approach offers business managers valuable insight into business performance — whether it be sales, portfolio management, customer views, or operational metrics.

IBM Global Services



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.

Figure 2: Customer Implementations**

Playfish Bowling Buddies

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.

Why Flex is Worth Your Money

Following is a comparison of Flex with competing technologies:

Flex and Microsoft SilverlightSilverlight is Microsoft's proprietary RIA technology. The tool set is fairly competent and .NET developers will already know the language in which to code. Silverlight still lags in penetrations as compared to Adobe tools. The numbers of third party Flex components are increasing quickly with contributions from the open source community.

Flex and Java FXThe user base for Java FX is very small. It also lags behind in font and 3D support. Flex applications use the Flash player like a virtual machine for Flex applications. Java developers can, by way of the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), use Java as the backend and use the more popular Flash for the frontend. Java developers familiar with Eclipse will also find it easy to work with Adobe Flex builder as it is based on Eclipse.

Flex and AJAXAJAX is the de-facto standard for developing RIAs amongst HTML developers. AJAX has a reasonable set of libraries and working with Ajax is no longer as difficult as it used to be. But compatibility issues can be a serious annoyance. All said, since Flex is a framework it makes it easier to write and maintain code compared to writing code in Ajax.

Flex and HTML5HTML 5 is the next generation of HTML with native support for video and vector graphics. Over time, HTML5 will be a force in RIA. But browser makers are notorious at abiding by



Flex 2 and RIAs support our goals of building and designing rich media experiences that reshape how users experience content. At MTV, we reinvented the look and feel of television — now we're doing the same thing with user experiences on the web. Flex 2 delivers essential elements for creating and maintaining web services — better developer productivity, an expanded set of powerful tools, easily scalable applications, and a consistent, reliable framework. Combined, these capabilities help us extend our position as a leader in delivering compelling, interactive digital content."

MTV Networks

Microsoft SilverlightJava FXAJAXHTML5Flash

Flex vs..

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 FlashEverything 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

Adobe Flex

The Dojo Foundation Dojo Toolkit

Google Web Toolkit (GWT)

Eclipse Rich Ajax Platform (RAP)

Microsoft Silverlight

Ext JS

jQuery

In house/custom

Other OSS Ajax

None - I'm not using any frameworks

Don't know

20%

12%

14%

4%

5%

4%

3%

12%

15%

9%

1%

Source: Saltmarch Intelligence Software Developer Survey 2011

Dojo Toolkit

Adobe Flex

GWT

other OSS Ajaxin house/custom



Figure 4

Developer's [Employee] Pick

Choice of RIA Technology

Flex

Silverlight

JavaFx

Richness of User Interface

Flex

Silverlight

JavaFx

Look and Feel (out of the box)

Programming Language

Learning Curve for Developers

Flex

Silverlight

JavaFx

Flex

Silverlight

JavaFx

Flex

Silverlight

JavaFx

Cost for Developers

UI/Layout Language

What did you Choose for your projects?

Flex

Silverlight

JavaFx

Flex

Silverlight

JavaFx

Flex

Silverlight

JavaFx

Source: Saltmarch Intelligence Software Developer Survey 2011

Flex

Silverlight

JavaFx

Flex

Silverlight

JavaFx

Conclusion

The last few years have seen unprecedented growth in RIA adoption — especially by Fortune 500 companies. RIA combines the goodness of instant Web access to centralized data to create a user experience that is both easy to use and enjoyable. Companies like NASDAQ that need to run high-use, high-volume applications that communicate in real-time and complete transactions in milliseconds are increasingly turning to use Adobe's Flex technology for the front-end and couple that with a rich back-end; for details of NASDAQ's RIA application see the box Customer Implementations.

This document has attempted to summarize Adobe Flex and the Flash Platform as a mature and evolving ecosystem, well suited 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



E*TRADE Germany

Compared to other development platforms like Java, such complex and dynamic Adobe Flex applications are much easier to integrate and more efficient to maintain. This new solution offers our customers significant trading advantages.