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Microsoft, Adobe wage verbal battle over RIAs


By Jeff Feinman
February 25, 2009 — 
It all started with an answer to a question at a telecommunications conference, which sparked a verbal feud over two of the more notable rich Internet application (RIA) platforms on the market.

When asked his thoughts on Microsoft Silverlight at Thomas Weisel Partners Technology & Telecom Conference 2009 in mid-February, Mark Garrett, Adobe’s executive vice president and CFO, said that Silverlight launched strong, but its adoption “has really fizzled out in the last six to nine months, I’d say. We’re innovating ahead of them, and they have not been able to catch up.”

Those remarks got under the skin of Tim Sneath, Microsoft's director of client platform evangelism. “We're very pleased with how Silverlight is doing,” Sneath told SD Times. “Even in this troubled economy, my team is working overtime to respond to requests from top Web 2.0 sites across the world who are adopting Silverlight. There's no other Web technology out there that packs so much punch in such a small size.”

Sneath said that Garrett’s comments make it seem as if he’s “living in a fantasy world.” He pointed out that Silverlight offers near infinite-scale image interoperability with DeepZoom, rich XML-based UI layout and markup, and seamless interaction with HTML. Microsoft has even been using Silverlight for its own technology needs by demonstrating how a new version of Office will use Silverlight in browser-based companion applications.

“In terms of Silverlight momentum, there's no question that we're on course. Silverlight 2 has only been out for five months and yet is now installed on more Internet-connected PCs than Firefox and Google Chrome combined,” said Sneath, who initially reacted to Garrett’s comments on his blog, Musings of a Client Platform Guy.

Garrett declined further comment about his remarks at the conference, which were first reported by Betanews.

Matt Rozen, a spokesman for Adobe, said Garrett’s comment was made for the financial community at a special event and was a quick answer to a question from an audience member. However, Sneath wasn’t convinced that the jab was a simple slip of the tongue, saying it is in Adobe’s interest to try to create the perception that Adobe’s Flex RIA platform is in huge demand while interest in Silverlight is waning.

Developers using both platforms said that there could be some fierce competition in the years to come between the two platforms. Rockford Lhotka, principal technology evangelist for IT consulting firm Magenic, has created a Silverlight version of CSLA .NET, an open-source .NET development framework for simplifying the production of Windows Forms, Web Forms, Windows Presentation Foundation and Web Services. Lhotka admitted that he is biased toward Silverlight, but he said he can’t see how someone could say that it’s fizzling.

“From my perspective, the technology is only a few months old and it seems to be spreading fairly rapidly, especially given the economy and how conservative businesses are at the moment,” he said. “At the same time, while I’m hopeful that Silverlight becomes a dominant force, nothing is ever a given. Look at [Betamax]/VHS or BluRay/HD-DVD and countless other examples where technologies become dominant that may or may not be the best technology.”

R.J. Owen, a senior developer with Denver-based user interface designer EffectiveUI, has worked primarily with Adobe Flex. He said that Silverlight is poised to be a huge competitor in the RIA space and offers features that Adobe’s platform doesn’t, such as multi-threading. However, Adobe’s commitment to open-source technology and its longer presence in the RIA market presently give it the edge.

“The general feel I have for the situation is that while Adobe’s platform is currently both more mature and easier to use, Microsoft is catching up extremely fast and will be very competitive very soon,” Owen said. “Adobe’s tools are currently more mature and provide a better designer-developer workflow, but a lot of that is due to the fact that we’re all very used to the way things are done with Adobe. Microsoft also hasn’t pushed the Silverlight player out hard to everyone’s machine, so Flash’s distribution still continues to be better.”

According to Microsoft, Silverlight 2 has been downloaded and installed on more than 100 million consumer PCs since it was launched in October 2008. Silverlight 1 was the platform of choice for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, streaming 2,200 hours of live coverage and more than 70 million videos from NBC’s Olympic website.

Adobe, meanwhile, said at its Adobe MAX Japan conference in January that Adobe AIR also had 100 million installations in less than one year after its initial release. Flash Player 10 was installed on more than 55% of computers worldwide in the first two months of its release, and it is expected to surpass 80% by the second quarter of 2009, the company claimed.


Related Search Term(s): Adobe, Microsoft, RIA, Silverlight


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Comments

02/27/2009 01:29:43 AM EST

And if you really are sick of proprietary RIA stacks and prefer an open source platform, you should check out Appcelerator Titanium. http://titaniumapp.com. We're building a competitive stack from the ground up with our open source community.

United StatesJeff Haynie


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