Microsoft guns for Adobe rich Internet apps crown

Flash and Flex owned rich Web application development until Silverlight came along

But what remains to be seen is whether content providers, Web designers, and Web 2.0 application developers will suffer as a result of the development-platform and client-player fight brewing between Adobe and Microsoft.

My conclusion? Maybe, sort of, and it depends.

For the longest time, Adobe stood nearly alone, claiming 90-plus percent of the RIA development market. RIA developers simply used Flex on the back end and Flash on the front.

And then came Microsoft’s announcement of Silverlight, a runtime meant to compete with Flash.

The truth is that there can be no definitive answer as to the problems a competing development platform from Microsoft will bring; it depends entirely on the angle you are viewing it from.

End-users, who will access RIAs through a browser, will likely have little to worry about. Browser leaders Microsoft IE and Mozilla Firefox will both offer a plug-in for each. Thus, no matter how the content was developed, your PC or Mac should in theory be able to seamlessly view and use it.

Unless, of course, the Silverlight plug-in from IE offers users of other Microsoft applications and components additional advantages. In other words, Silverlight, being a .Net-compatible technology, could offer better integration with other applications built on .Net.

Chris Swenson, director of software analysis at NPD Group, says that Microsoft actually has two development environments for Silverlight: Visual Studio and all of its Expression applications.

Designers will be able to create stuff in Expression, the results of which can then be imported into Visual Studio, allowing a unique and, some would say, first-time collaboration between developers and designers.

“Microsoft has a huge installed based of Visual Studio users who would never touch [Adobe Flex],” Swenson says. And because Microsoft has imported it to the .Net platform, you can run it in both Windows and Mac through Silverlight.

While this could result in lock-in, Roger Kay, founder of Endpoint Technologies, says that, in general, integration is better for consumers but worse for competitors.

“Apple, which is not being charged as a monopoly, integrates everything,” Kay pointed out.

It is true that integrating all components using the same platform offers end-users and IT a simplified approach. Rather than having to figure out an infinite number of pathways through heterogeneous technologies, integration presumably means all of the platform’s components have been tested to ensure that they work with one another.

In the long run, integration could result in de facto monopoly, stifling innovation.

Is this the path Microsoft will go down? It wouldn’t be the first time.

One thing is certain, from the folks I spoke with: Silverlight is an excellent technology.

Rob Enderle, principal at Enderle Group, called Silverlight, “super-Flash.”

I also spoke with a very large company (not Adobe) that claimed Microsoft was trying to usurp the Internet with Silverlight but admitted that the technology is a powerful, exceptionally good RIA player that is “visually compelling” with the ability to render 3-D graphics and full-motion video.

The good news for the end-user, however, is a double-edged sword for IT.

Remember: Most Web sites are designed to drive commerce. If, as a consumer, you like the solution that Silverlight offers, IT will have to respond.

“In a contest between IT and line-of-business executives, line wins,” Enderle says.

So if the line organization says Flash can’t do what we want done, IT will have to redo it for Silverlight.

And while Adobe never has and never will own the entire vertical stack for RIAs, Microsoft does and can offer it to IT. They can put it all together in a nice package.

IT may worry about lock-in, but if it drives revenue, then IT will be beholden to Microsoft. There is no way around it.

End of story.

Actually, there is a lot more to this story. And here’s a tease: .Net runs on top of a CLR (Common Language Runtime). It’s not in Silverlight 1.0 but is promised next year in Version 1.1.

Silverlight 1.1 will include, in the package and the browser, the CLR and a large subset of .Net class libraries, perhaps with the code complied in C#. What will then be running inside the browser will basically be a .Net application.

Where that will lead raises issues worth discussing.