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Almost a Clean Sweep: About 3 in 4 Use AJAX


By Alan Zeichick
September 1, 2006 — 
Nearly three out of four software development managers say that they’re using or planning to use AJAX-based rich Internet application technologies. That’s according to an independent July 2006 study conducted by BZ Research.

BZ Research is a division of BZ Media, publisher of SD Times. The study was of 578 subscribers to SD Times, and has an accuracy of 3 percentage points.

In this study, 18.9 percent of respondents said that their companies have already deployed production systems using Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. Another 12.0 percent said that they are developing their first production systems but haven’t deployed yet, and 14.2 percent are developing pilot systems. In addition, 37.7 percent are studying the technology. Only 9.5 percent said that neither they nor their company has plans to use AJAX; 7.6 percent said that they didn’t know.

Why are development managers interested in AJAX, and in related RIA and so-called “Web 2.0” technologies? The responses varied, but many cited the improved user interface experience due to AJAX’s elimination of postbacks.

“We are looking into using the technology for a Windows-like interface to our embedded system,” said Wendi Whitcomb, a senior systems engineer at ZoZo Engineering, while Jeffrey Price, president of Price Performance, explained, “Customers demand desktop application look and feel. Citrix/Terminal server approach [is] becoming cost prohibitive due to licensing costs.” Scott Finnerty, technical director of Barkley Evergreen & Partners Interactive, said, “We’ve embraced Rich Internet Application development as being key to the future of user experience for our clients.”

Other reasons had to do with the back end of an AJAX deployment. David Yutzy, manager of Web applications at Retail Ventures Services, explained that AJAX can “reduce bandwidth requirements, increase utilization of servers, [and] enhance experience to users.” Similarly, “AJAX allows us to reduce network load and server utilization to allow servers to handle more load and be more responsive,” said Blaine McDonnell, senior analyst at AT&T Services.

That’s not to say that everyone is an unabashed fan of AJAX. “Personally, I feel that it’s overblown in popularity and not all that useful in all applications,” said one respondent, who wished not to be identified.

Security seems to be a common concern, with AJAX being “too much exposed for the client side: Some delegated checking should be double-checked in server, since in the client side it seems to be exposed to crack it,” said Paulo Soares, general manager of Central Call.

Another respondent, Philip Christensen, managing director of Formation Design Systems, added, “Tools are too immature at the moment for full commercial deployment. [It’s a] promising technology, [and it] remains to be seen how standardized the environment will be and consequently how low cost deployment can be.”

Interestingly, development is evenly split when it comes to platforms for deploying AJAX-based server applications, with 52.1 percent saying they’ll use Java or J2EE, and 51.9 percent saying Microsoft’s ASP.NET or Atlas—a statistical tie. An additional 19.7 percent are using or considering Macromedia Flash, 9.8 percent Ruby on Rails, and 5.5 percent ColdFusion.

“The real value of AJAX will come from tools that reduce the complexity and cost of implementing an enhanced user interface in the web browser environment,” concluded Joel Simpson, director of software development and integration at Codesic Consulting. “The highly user-focused perspective taken in the design of AJAX applications results in functionality that rivals functionality found in some of the best desktop applications available today.”


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