Title: Flex, Flash, Spoon and the road ahead…. Date: 2011-11-17 21:10 Author: Michael Category: AS3 Tags: ActionScript 3, Flash Slug: flex-flash-and-the-road-ahead Status: published
I just had to brain vomit this….
- Flex relies on the Flash Player and/or Air, correct? Without constant tight integration between Spoon and the Flash Player… I think Flex is heading down a troubled road with a stormy horizon around 1, 2 or 3 years from now.
You can innovate until you are blue in the face, but you need deep integration into the Flash Player to make things work even halfway decently. Lets face it, Flex has been a bit of a dog in performance. It has issues like the rest of the software world, but now it lacks significant engineering efforts.
Is this situation going to materially improve in the next 6 months? Will it be better or worse without heavy, heavy Flash player integration? How will that be accomplished given Adobe needs to focus like they’ve never focused on their new SaaS offerings among other treats outlined in the linked document?
- Enterprise was the leading innovation context for a long time, this is changing! Are we not at all concerned that a consumer driven revolution in productivity and innovation will change Enterprise?
Furthermore, we are seeing a lot more of; “Here is my iPad, now make it work!” from the CEO’s through Mobile Sales to IT. This is a major shift and its accelerating. Many are starting to say that for the first time, consumer tech will drive enterprise tech going forward.
I see a lot of Flex folks saying; “Enterprise will save us!” Maybe. Economic conditions are changing very rapidly from governments to bakeries. Radical divergence from the status quo will be common place in tech. I’ve seen an iPad in a fire truck.
- What a lot of people fail to realize is Adobe is in a bit of trouble financially speaking. They have revised enterprise growth down every quarter and “legacy” (cough) projections look tepid at best. See here:
http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/invrelations/2011_analyst_mtg/pdfs/FA2011_web_MarkGarrett.pdf
Their strategy is to focus on the marketer and boost subscription rates to meet top line growth. They are literally betting the farm on subscriptions and marketing. That doesn’t sound “enterprise-y”, “flash-y” or “flex-y” to me.
- They will try to move the creative seats to a subscription based model in the next three years. OUCH! I fucking hate subscriptions, everyone and their mother wants a $5 dollar a month (or more) deduction from my checking account! Obviously, I don’t believe in this model.
I’m sure if I can see the following, many others have as well. The market is ripe for Adobe to get upstaged in their legacy apps (PS, AI, FW). What I’m trying to say is, nothing lasts forever and this company is in an awkward place right now.
I like seeing the glass half full, but there are way larger forces at work here. We are fool hardy to accept them at face value with no further consideration.