Rich Internet Application Blues for customers and software developers
Internet evolution and revolution has brought massive shifts in all the facets of human mankind. It has made a world look like a single hyper-mart where in the e-communication is no longer a barrier. In reality the interactions have shifted from simple text based messaging to 2D and 3D base communication. In today’s internet world this is synonym to saying that the “shift is from web1.0 to web2.0”. This shift directly touches the heart of the users and reduces the gap between real business/human interactions with that of virtual interactions which exists in virtual world of internet.
We all know the innovations that are born in universities and research labs later find a place either in opensource world or in shareware world. Now we are coming to the million dollar question “what is the cost implication”? This is a pivot point for both customers and software Services Company to make the decision. There is no direct answer for this question but our research at “Infosys Java Centre of Excellence” has designed a Quadrant based decision making RIA (Rich Internet Applications) framework for our customers. As long as customer gives their inputs wrt to degree of richness they want in their applications and what is their cost budget then this framework will help them unravel their problem statement.
Let’s have a closer look at this framework. The frame work has mainly two parameters:
CC: cost to customer
ROF: Richness of Application
CC | ROF | Quadrant # | Explanation |
0 | 0 | 1 | ~zero cost + zero Application richness |
0 | 1 | 2 | Low cost + low application richness |
1 | 0 | 3 | Medium Cost + medium application Richness |
1 | 1 | 4 | High Cost + medium high application richness |
Other definitions used in the calculations are:
CS: cost of software
MC: Maintenance cost
LC: Licensing Cost
BC: Bug fixing cost
LC: learning Cost
CDC: Code Customization cost
CC = ∑ CS + MC + LC + BC
RIA = ∑ LC + CDC
Total Cost = ∑ CC + RIA
By using the above formula we can arrive at the mapping of four quadrants to the existing softwares as illustrated below:
Now, it is very evident that the quadrant 3 is the most desirable choice for conservative customers who still want to see the rich user interface in the applications. The classification of softwares to their respective quadrant was based on the reference implementations. There are lot many software/toolkits available in the market which are not yet covered in this blog.
With mergers and acquisitions, the defined matrix weightages may change due to implication of licensing cost and addition of new features in the RIA toolkits. The RIA decision framework will always help the customer and software Services Company to make the right choice.
Comments
Very succintly put. I wonder if there also needs to be another dimension for checking the applicability. For e.g. a home user end customer surely wants to go for quadrant 3. But not so for an application that is highly specific to a domain and where users just want to look at data, not necessarily in a rich form.
Also sometimes the content just takes the richness factor out of the equation. Google search website has minimal ROF while Live or Bing is superb at it. But we all know where the search traffic is going :-)
All said this is a good framework to have the decision factors put in front of you.
Posted by: Kedar Vaidya | June 21, 2009 02:44 PM
Cost to customer and richness of application as defined by ability to adapt to workflow changes enhances product awareness.
Posted by: Jide Ogunsanya | June 30, 2009 07:29 AM