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Curl, Incorporated 1 Cambridge Center Cambridge, MA 02142 www.curl.com | 617.761.1200 Enterprise RIA – Real Examples and Lessons Learnt Jnan Dash, Chief Strategy Officer, Curl Inc. October 2008
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Page 1: Ajax World Oct2008 Jrd

Curl, Incorporated1 Cambridge Center

Cambridge, MA 02142www.curl.com | 617.761.1200

Enterprise RIA – Real Examples and Lessons Learnt

Jnan Dash,

Chief Strategy Officer, Curl Inc.

October 2008

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Speaker Bio

� Last 6 years (2002-Now) – Consultant & Board Member at several start-ups, Chief Strategy Officer at Curl since 2+ years

� 10 Years (1992-2002) – Oracle, Group Vice President, Systems Architecture and Technology, responsible for the server product planning and rollout

� 16 years (1975-1992) – IBM, Planner, architect, and development manager for DB2 product line at Silicon Valley Lab and Austin Lab. Head of IBM’s Database architecture, planning, and technology

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Talk outline

� RIA 101

� Enterprise RIA

� Real examples & lessons learnt

� Current offerings – a comparison

� Summary

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How it all startedHow it all started

� RIAs attempt to combine the strengths of desktop and Web applications without falling prey to their weaknesses.

Martin Heller, InfoWorld, 8/2007

� The next generation of the Web is marked by dynamic, interactive, open and highly flexible applications that not onlygo beyond the capabilities of classic Web applications but also exceed the features of desktop applications.

Jim Rapoza, eWeek, 8/2007

� Defining RIA– Any web browser technology that provides more sophisticated user-interface capabilities than HTML and CSS alone

– A web browser technology that communicates with backend services

4

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The early days The early days -- Web 1.0Web 1.0

5

Web Browser Server Application

Internet

request

response

HTML/CSS

Get Data

Build

Interface

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And now And now -- Web 2.0?Web 2.0?

6

Web Browser Server Application

Internet

request

response

Rich Internet Application

Get Data

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The RIA LandscapeThe RIA Landscape

7

Web Browser

Rich Internet Application• Ajax (Dojo, GWT, Prototype, etc.)

• Adobe Flex, AIR• Curl • Microsoft Silverlight

• Microsoft IE

• Mozilla FireFox

• Apple Safari• Google Chrome

Server Application• Java EE• Microsoft .NET

• LAMP

• Other

request

Internet

response

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User InterfaceReach

Distribution

Adoption

Processing

Interoperability

Management

State

RIA

Fat Client

HTML/HTTP

RIA explained

Kiviat Diagram, Courtesy The Burton Group

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RIA benefits

� Rich user experience (UXP)

– Support work processes with powerful, friendly UI

– Eliminate waiting time

� Web deployment ⇨⇨⇨⇨ improved reach & lower cost.– Reach new users/customers

– Run on any platform

– Lower maintenance/administration costs

– Lower infrastructure costs

� These benefits apply to both:

– Internal enterprise apps

– Consumer-facing apps

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Enterprise RIA

Separate Process, Desktop/Browser,

Complex UI, Scalability, Security,

High performance

Shift from Client-server

General RIA vs. Enterprise RIA

Web platform, More client-side processing, Stateful, Dynamic, High developer productivity

General RIA

Ajax deployment, Browser-centric,

Simple UI

Shift from HTML Thin Client, Web 1.0

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The enterprise RIA dilemma

Enterprise RIA platforms must meet the needs of complex client-server applications.

Reach

Interface

Traditional Browser Client

Traditional fat Client

Rich Internet Apps

LimitedBroad

Simple

Rich

Complex

CharacterApplications

1 2 3

4

Performance & Complexity – With broad reach and low TCO

?

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Requirements for Enterprise RIA

� Displays complex graphics and reports for users

� Handles large data sets

� Ensures very high performance

� Offers very high scalability

� Addresses strict security requirements

� Provides online/offline operation

� Follows SOA and standards

� Facilitates migration from legacy apps

� Enables platform independence

� Includes rich development tools

� Eases manageability

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Categories of Products

� Adobe AIR

� Google Gears

� Mozilla Prism

� Curl

Browser RIA Platforms

� Ajax (240 frameworks)

� Adobe Flex

� Silverlight

� OpenLaszlo

� BackBase

� Nexaweb

� Curl

Desktop RIA Platforms

Browser Only

Desktop & Browser

Enterprise Focus

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Customer Customer

CasesCases

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� A leading software vendor that provides solutions for governance, risk and compliance including financial control management, internal audit, risk management, IT governance and compliance.

� Paisley delivers comprehensive and tightly integrated solutions to better identify and reconcile the risks impacting organizations, allowing users to ensure that evaluations of risks are completed quickly, consistently and accurately.

� Two primary product offerings:

– Paisley Enterprise GRC

– GRC on Demand (SaaS offering)

� Ranked by the Gartner Group as the leader in GRC

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“The Problem”

� Biggest competitors are Excel and Word.

� Users are used to fat clients.

� The jump to pure web form based processing is just too great.

� They put a lot of JavaScript into forms to try and appease the users and make the application feel more “client side”

� They realized the need to move some of the processing back to the desktop.

� Large volume of data to be consumed.

� Need a more productive and intuitive way to process data (colors, graphs, etc) but still drill to underlying data records

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“The Solution”

� Created a “push” model for Curl. They send Curl Data and it knows how to go get the files to display that data.

� 4 people in training for 3 days.

� Took 4 months to ship a product release.

� Timeline– Heatmaps (2004)– Scorecards (2005)– Desktops (2006)– Workforce Scheduling (2007)

� Transitioned from Domino to Java pretty effortlessly within Curl – very high reuse of the Curl assets.

� A directive was to make it look like Excel and make it print out just like it appears on the screen.

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Challenge

� Goal to be number 1 in global customer satisfaction

� Link field information to business management

Solution

� Real-time connection of field information to parts repair information

� Event driven alerts to potential problems

� Visualize the suspected points with rich graphical interface

� Integrate with other media such as PDFs and spreadsheets

Service Information Transmitting System

Benefits

� Web enabled broad reach

– Available all domestic service points in Japan

– Easy expansion to overseas location

� Scalability - loosely-coupled architecture between Client and Database

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Lessons Learnt

� Requirements

– Need to provide this application (services) through Web-based infrastructure (internet) because this application will be used globally

– Need to have stress-less user experiences providing rich UI like graphical charts etc.

– Need to integrate with other office applications like PDF or MS Excel.

� Solution

– Client-server technology products like Oracle Portal did not satisfy their need

– The Curl RIA Platform was the best answer, no disturbance to back-end, shift to more client processing for speed

– Data-intensive, BI analytics, performance is key

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Challenge

� The Billing Application - a true RIA for Corporate Customers: optional consolidated billing for landline, Long Distance, Cell phones, and VOIP -offered to clients when they renew their service agreement.

� The old system built on Microsoft Visual Basic had to mail CD-Rom to users for different services. Many problems in data upload and performance

Solution

� The new system has Curl as the front-end client technology with Oracle database at backend. The Curl RTE is automatically downloaded from the front-page of this application when user signs on for the first time.

� The application is in use since 2006, deployed all across Japan with 15000 clients

Benefits

� The whole application development took one year including the backend - at a cost of $1m.

� The new system reduces cost by 10% and improves accuracy of data. They only deploy two web servers and 2 application servers (Oracle App. Server and Weblogic).

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Challenge

� CRM for call centers: Build such an application and offer as SaaS over the web

� They tried HTML during early stage. Also looked at Flash, and .Net.

� Flash lacked functionality for business application

� .Net is restricted to Windows only platform.

� Curl was the most suited for the “business application”.

� The SaaS license model of Curl was attractive

Solution

� The application uses Curl as the GUI technology with Oracle 10G database and Tomcat as the application server in the middle tier. They use J2EE for backend logic.

� Currently there are 2 clients using it. This is a classic form-based application, very similar to the client-server apps with Windows rich interface of the past.

� Deployed since May,2006

Benefits

� Development cost - 72 person months. SI partner Akasi built it in 6 months elapsed time

� The ROI on Curl: better performance than old HTML which needed lots of screen refresh. SaaS model of delivery makes it very attractive for the client.

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Sonata’s RIA Technology Study

� Evaluate 3 RIA technologies platforms

– Curl

– Flex

– ASP.NET AJAX

� By measuring factors contributing to

– Ease of learning

– Ease of design

– Ease of development

– Runtime performance

� Done by Sonata, a leader in Outsourced Software Development

– Team of 4 people in 2 months

– Results in a detailed 55-page report with code samples

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Study’s sample findings

Start-up time for various Data sizes(No. of records)

2 211

3 4

20

4 8

22

715

28

17

27

44

35

72

86

124

95

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

Curl Flex AJAX

Tim

e(s

econds)

1000 2000 5000 10000

20000 50000 100000

16

417

1246

0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400

Curl

Flex

AJAX

Application download size(KB)• For AJAX no plug-in is required

7834

1137

0

16077

2171

0

0 5000 10000 15000 20000

Curl

Flex

AJAX

Size in KBPlug-in installer size Installed plug-in size

Source: RIA Development Platforms: Curl, Flex and AJAX – A Comparison. Sonata Software, August, 2007

Memory Utilization for various Data sizes(No. of records)

5325

55 446084

5166124

6080

203

83118

436

150182

713

55 60

0

200

400

600

800

Curl Flex AJAX

Mem

ory

Utilizatio

n (M

B)

1000 2000 5000 10000

20000 50000 100000

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RIA platform spectrum

B2COpen

B2BClosed

B2CControlled

Minimal Client ProcessingSimple UI

Heavy Client ProcessingComplex UI – Data visualization

Ajax Flex & Silverlight AIR & Curl

� Application profiles

– B2B – Extended enterprise

– B2E – Employee tools

– B2C – SaaS, Consumer tools

� Curl has over 300 enterprise class customers

– B2E, B2B accounts for about 80-90%

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“Enterprise RIA” vendors

� Ajax is inadequate for the enterprise

– Poor security (xss attacks, DOM is porous)

– Poor scalability

– Poor performance

� Only 4 players1. Curl (Curl)

– MIT research, one language, designed for enterprise, JIT compiler, very high performance/scale/security, 300 customers

2. Flex, AIR (Adobe)

– 2 separate products, Flex came from Macromedia and not designed for enterprise use, AIR is new and very few customers

3. JavaFX (Sun)

– very new, unproven, no customers, large java developer community

4. Silverlight (Microsoft)

– new, media-focused to fight Flex, very few customers, large .Net developer community

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Enterprise RIA – questions to ask the vendor

1. Handle complex graphics required in reports and data visualizations?

2. Handle large data sets and process them on the client with high performance?

3. Scale adequately with 10s of thousands of users?

4. Address the strict security requirements of the enterprise?

5. Provide online/offline operation?

6. Support SOA and WOA standards?

7. Help with migration from legacy apps?

8. Support the broad spectrum of clients and browsers?

9. Provide a rich set of development tools?

10.Provide tools to reduce maintenance costs?

Can your RIA platform:

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Summary

� The term RIA is used broadly across the entire application spectrum

� Enterprise RIA has stringent needs compared to the general RIA

– Expectations based on client-server experience

� Convergence of Web apps and Desktop apps

– Driving new set of RIA requirements

� Only four players addressing enterprise needs

– Curl, Adobe AIR, JavaFX and Microsoft Silverlight

– Curl has the largest number of enterprise deployments so far

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Thank YouThank You

[email protected]@curl.com

www.curl.comwww.curl.com