MS-Adobe salvos fuel app-delivery debate

Lost perhaps amid the recent media-technology saber-rattling between Microsoft and Adobe Systems is the ongoing struggle for the future of enterprise app delivery that is fast taking shape.

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Microsoft’s Silverlight, being dubbed a Flash killer, will certainly provide the foundation for the company’s burgeoning RIA (rich Internet application) play. But whether Microsoft can leverage its expansive install base — and marketing/partnering muscle — to successively chip away at the near ubiquitous Flash platform remains questionable. What will be interesting to see, however, will be how the company’s forthcoming Expression package will compete with Adobe’s Creative Suite in terms of delivering — and winning the minds of those who create them — the kind of rich Web-based apps quickly gaining traction both inside and outside the corporate firewall.

Although the practicality of and entrenched corporate affinity for desktop apps suggests they will remain a vital component of the enterprise mix for years to come, the RIA movement certainly plays to Adobe’s strengths and could very well leach significant market share from Microsoft in the near future. Obviously, Microsoft’s re-branding of its Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere in the form of Silverlight suggests it is intent on not letting Adobe get too far ahead in the RIA game.

Meanwhile, the Adobe Media Player — a desktop app aimed at Microsoft’s Windows Media Player — showcases the kind of offline functionality that can be developed using the company’s Apollo framework, currently in alpha. Apollo allows developers to create applications using HTML, Flash, and Ajax and run them offline. Not only does the runtime seek to shake the popularity of Java and .Net, but by enabling the development of offline RIAs, it brings into focus a larger RIA debate, namely, whether the enterprise will more likely embrace the desktop Web app model — as proposed by Google, for example, with its Google Apps environment — or offline RIAs.

Apollo is not alone in the offline RIA development camp. Startup Dekoh, which will also be showcasing its platform at this week’s Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, today announced the public alpha of its Dekoh Desktop for developing, running, and sharing offline RIAs. And certainly the debate between desktop Web apps and offline RIAs will not be reductive. Instead, enterprises will likely embrace both paradigms where use cases prove either to be the best fit.

Which apps will go the desktop Web route and which the offline RIA will be an intriguing evolution to watch, as will the edge cases where both models prove effective yet provide distinctly different competitive edges.