Pathfinder Development » 10 Business Reasons to Use AJAX

10 Business Reasons to Use AJAX

Dietrich Kappe, Monday, May 8, 2006 @ 9:00 am

I'm not sure where on the hype curve we are with AJAX, but one of the open question for businesses is: why and where should you consider using AJAX? I give ten places, in declining order of urgency, where the use of AJAX should be considered. Most of this innovation will be undertaken without all of the "it's the web!" hype of the dotcom boom. Don't expect to see "AJAX Inside" labels on product packaging. Expect businesses instead to emphasize the improved functionality, usability and solutions that their RIA software provides.

ASP's with existing applications. This ship has already sailed. The ASP's include GMail and Yahoo Mail, but extend to places like Salesforce.com, openair.com, and so on. The lower the switching costs, as in the case of email services, the more vulnerable you are to being overtaken by your slicker, more usable AJAX enabled competition. The argument for the consumers of ASP's is simple: reduced labor costs. If you can save 30 seconds on each operation, the ROI is easy to see.
ISV's that have products with web-based interfaces. AJAX has already disturbed the world of portals, with drag-and-drop portlets eliminating the need for clunky layout and content pages. But here the opportunities are vast, covering everything from dashboard and monitoring apps with async updates, OLAP tools with drill-down capabilities, Document Management apps with improved browsing, viewing and search, Workflow and BPM tools with improved diagramming, etc.
ISV's that have products without web-based interfaces. Some applications just didn't translate well to the web. They had rich, direct manipulation interfaces, or some other features that just couldn't be translated into a forms-and-reports webapp. On the development front, modeling tools, which hove lived on the desktop or in client/sever land, are a possible target, as are other products where collaboration may make up for the lack of convenience of an application that requires a network connection to work. Desktop productivity applications, e.g. spreadsheets, word processors, and so on, have been seeing a lot of activity in the development of AJAX, but there I think that the collaborative spreadsheet may be the way to go. Product managers need to analyze whether their previously protected apps now need to put a web face on. That and the next item...
ISV's whose products can now be ASP'd. We've already mentioned the desktop productivity apps as an area of AJAX activity. And anything that can be turned into an AJAX app can also be ASP'd. But the real question is, if you build it, will they come? Desktop productivity apps are not the best candidates for this opportunity if collaboration isn't involved. PowerPoint or other presentation apps that are typically used in environments where connectivity is uncertain will certainly not make the cut. But applications that are used occasionally -- some of Adobe's product line comes to mind: Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. -- and have a big price tag, may be a good fit.
E-commerce. There is the argument that AJAX can help your customers accomplish their tasks more quickly and result in less cart abandonment. The real reason may be credibility, however. This Stanford study back from 2002 shows that credibility is tied to visual design rather than content. If your web site looks like something from last year, you're likely to fall behind in consumer perception. Old Navy has already put some AJAX enable shopping enhancements in place, as have Gap and Banana Republic. Look for other e-tailers to follow their lead.
Financial services. Certainly some of the same credibility arguments apply to Financial Services as they do to E-Commerce, so does Jakob Nielsen's argument for the competitive advantage of usability. The financial services industry has long adopted rich interaction and async update in spots, like ETrade's flash stock information widget. But look for banking, insurance and other providers who offer complex products to adopt the RIA experience offered by AJAX.
Tool makers. Technically not a use of AJAX, but closely related. IDE's, frameworks. There's lots of activity on this front. TibCO has entered the the fray with it's GI product, and it does incorporate AJAX -- it runs in the browser. Expect all of the big IDE and tool makers to add support for AJAX if they haven't already. Expect all of the app server vendors to add AJAX support. Same for the web servers, messaging middleware, etc.
Infrastructure providers. Again not technically a use of AJAX, but closely related. Expect a big explosion of new AJAX supporting infrastructure software. Firewalls, load balancers and other network appliances will need to be retooled to meet the new performance needs and profiles of AJAX applications.
Community site providers. The line between forums and chat, bookmarks and collaboration is blurring. Usability, credibility are again part of competitive advantage in this space. Yes, the network effect is the strongest factor, and a nifty AJAX upstart isn't going to dislodge Myspace, but for smaller, less well established community categories, it still could be a factor.
Content providers/Media. This category includes newspapers, magazines, online news sites, etc. This category is a tough call, as it illustrates the conflict between the old web technology and ways of doing things and the new AJAX technology. On the one hand, news and media sites have a proven, bookmarkable, searchable page model that works well with their advertising-driven business model. The bell-weather of newspapers, the NYT, has limited their improvements to collaborative filtering and enhanced multimedia resources, while the WSJ has added some AJAX enabled selection-based search, so the movement here seems somewhat tepid at the moment. Look for improvements that enhance but don't fundamentally change the user experience.

Right now the hype of AJAX hasn't resulted in a whole lot of activity in the corporate ranks. Product managers are wisely keeping their powder dry and waiting for the technology to mature. But the pressure to respond to competition will ultimately drive a wave to retooling -- in the 10 places above and elsewhere.

Topics: Business Reasons for Ajax, Web/Tech

agile ajax

Comments: 14 so far

Good post! AJAX on!!

Comment by Haytham, Thursday, May 11, 2006 @ 4:39 pm
10 Business Reasons to Use AJAX

With all of the time I spend ripping on Ajax, I figured that I might make a point of sharing one blogger’s thoughts on Ajax in the business world….

Comment by Lockergnome's Web Developers, Saturday, May 13, 2006 @ 12:32 am
First of all I would like to say that this is a great post.

I am actually a developer but from my point of view your post looks even more on the money. I have long been developing AJAX applications and I too had the feeling that there is much maturing to be done. I think one of the weakest aspects of the AJAX hype is manageability. While AJAX applications had taken the user experience from the dark ages back to where it should be, there has been very little concern on the consequences. AJAX based applications are still very complex to develop and they are very unstable because of there complexity.

So in the above prospective I think too that product managers are doing wisely double checking there options. I have been contemplating these issues from the technology side of things to try to understand what makes these applications so hard to develop and maintain causing them to be so risky for product managers.

A couple of years ago I had developed a desktop application for one of the companies I worked for and I realized that developing a desktop application does not come with all the dilemmas of building a web application. After long thinking this issue out I had got to the conclusion that when building web applications you always start with the question “How am I going to do it?” instead of the question “What am I going to do?”, while desktop development automatically starts up with the second question.

That was exactly what led me to develop Visual WebGui, which is actually a desktop oriented development for web. Adopting the well known WinForms model for the .NET environment I had created an environment that lets you develop web applications exactly like you develop desktop applications and by doing so I managed to solve that issue. The concept actually eliminated the first question by hiding all the web plumbing and web snags that developers face and by doing so it provides a much more manageable environment to develop web applications.

This concept obviously does not fit all projects but it fits where it hurts the most, in IT oriented web applications where having a manageable environment is super critical. Existing applications could be better off using Atlas like frameworks to boost existing web applications but new applications or extensions to existing web application could definitely benefit from the concept.

I think Visual WebGui is the mature solution for product managers. Using existing tools and long time tested concepts it reduces the risk and accelerates web development cycles. while still in beta, I believe it will bring AJAX into the main stream.

http://www.visualwebgui.com
Guy Peled

Comment by Guy Peled, Saturday, May 13, 2006 @ 1:01 am
One reason not to use Ajax unless the company makes an effort to do something about it…

lack of accessibility.

Comment by meryl, Saturday, May 13, 2006 @ 6:31 am
10 Bussiness Gründe AJAX zu verwenden

Dietrich Kappe hat auf seinem pathfinder Blog eine Liste von 10 Bussiness-Grnden AJAX einzusetzten, zusammengestellt.
Er zeigt auf in welchen Software Bereichen AJAX Techniken sinnvoll sind und wie sie Zeit- und Arbeitserleichterungen herbeif&uu…

Comment by MP:Blog - Mediaprojekte Netzwerk, Sunday, May 14, 2006 @ 2:18 pm
All businesses that communicate with customers online should consider AJAX. Careful and well planned implementation of AJAX can lead to an enhanced user experience without the complexity discussed above.

This should never be a case of All-or-nothing; AJAX should be implemented gradually and starting with what makes sense first.

In the case of on demand business applications such as CRM, sales people who spend less time clicking and more time selling value the little things AJAX does for them.

Comment by CRM Software Expert, Thursday, May 18, 2006 @ 5:27 pm
I agree with the above posts. AJAX will continue to evolve at a steady rate. One intriguing feature is that full AJAX support is available in the Eclipse environment via MyEclipse. Have you guys tried it?
Jens

Comment by Jens E, Friday, May 19, 2006 @ 11:33 am
Over usage of AJAX and COMET technologies in enterprise applications could be deadly to the end users. Users who spent the last 10 years using web browsers will have trouble with not being able to click the back button to go back!

Is AJAX dead? No! To the contrary it is such a nice technology if you know how to use it. Web based software providers should think of AJAX in areas that will reduce the time users spend on tasks, not to look cool.

CRM and ERP software applications are a very important areas where AJAX and COMET can help greatly if implemented correctly and not overly. Some CRM vendors like Salesboom.com implemented AJAX and COMET for system alerts and other areas.

Comment by CRM software vendor, Thursday, June 29, 2006 @ 11:06 am
I have no doubt that Ajax will take off and change the web. Despite your excellent article there remains two large barriers to overcome. Firstly laws in many countries require sites to be accessible. I know that several individuals have shown that Ajax can be accessible but this is still a major concern to clients. Secondly average users are not educated in how AJAX works. This would seem like a simple thing to overcome but changing without education could be very dangerous. I expect these problems to be overcome but that it could be 18 - 24 months before we see AJAX used without these problems.

Comment by George, Tuesday, July 11, 2006 @ 8:04 am
Stanford study back from 2002:
“…less than one third (29%) say they trust Web sites that sell products or services…
58 percent who say they trust newspapers and television news and the 47 percent who say they trust the federal government in Washington.”

I really hope the picture is different in 2007

Comment by FP Images, Tuesday, February 20, 2007 @ 2:25 pm
Pls. reccoment Ajax IED.

Comment by ob1, Tuesday, September 11, 2007 @ 8:23 am
nice article…

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