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Positioning ColdFusion in the Marketplace (Hal Helms CFObjective Keynote Summary)

Posted on Mar 16, 2006

For previous CFObjective presentation summaries, go here and here.

Hal started by explaining that prospective buyers of any product tend to identify brands by a single words or concepts (we went through some examples...and I likely missed some details here). So, what is ColdFusion's position? "Easy" was brought up, and Hal addressed this by saying that to many IT managers easy means making my developers' lives easy, which may or may not be a priority, especially if they feel there is some risk involved in the choice. Plus, fads tend to take over and it is a rare manager that will oppose the opinion of his peers (because such a position comes with a certain level of risk). It is the common wisdom right now that Java and C# hold the position of strength in enterprise application development.ColdFusion does not hold a strong position in enterprise application development, from which has arisen the "ColdFusion is Java" argument. This argument is an attempt to reposition ColdFusion but it challenges entrenched "position beliefs", which are difficult, if not impossible, to change. Plus this argument is a "me too" argument, which are rarely effective.

Hal asserted that the best strategy is in fact not to attack a leaders perceived weaknesses, but to attack their strength. He then laid out his view of such a strategy as it relates to ColdFusion. The "theory of constraints" states that within any system there is one and only one constraining operant at any given time and lifting that constraint is the job of the manager. So, what is the constraint within the system of IT development? We're not giving users what they need.

We need a system of innovation; a path of continuous improvement; a rapid response to user requirements and rapid development of new versions. Java and C# don't meet this need while ColdFusion does. This accepts that Java/C# are enterprise-ready, but takes the position that discovery and innovation can happen in ColdFusion while standardization can happen in Java. This takes the strength of Java/C#, its enterprise-ready status, and turns it into a weakness by accepting it but showing how it can limit innovation and rapid response. It also accepts that Java/C# have a place within the development process without position ColdFusion with simply a "me too" argument.

Obviously, there is much more to this argument...and better developers who understand application development is a large part of this (Simon Horwith and Ryan Guill have both made this argument as well). However, I think Hal has done us all favor in opening this discussion; it relates directly to the development/use of frameworks that help display the growing maturity of ColdFusion as a language and of ColdFusion developers.

Comments

a couple of points:

- it seems that ASP.NET is riding on Microsoft's version of the old "nobody got fired for buying IBM" mentality (just that it's applied to MS for software). Sure *nix houses (and the resurgence of Apple's OSX for workstations) are are helping to shoot that down in flames but for a MS-based business how do you fight that mindset?

- I'm actually back doing ASP.NET work at the moment (after 4 years in CF land - a long story). The antagonism towards CF from the ASP community is highly caustic. And while the same old enterprise-based arguments keep being thrown up they are not without foundation. Maybe I'm just a dumb-arse but documentation for enterprise development (I don't mean frameworks) is really thin on the ground (or woefully inadequate) while there's no shortage of "how to run a query". It's the same old suspects that are missing: "dummies" guides on JRun clustering, session replication and tracking, serialisation of CFC's, etc.

having lived in two competing camps, CF is the better product IMHO, but it's not perfect and it's not nearly supported enough in the head-to-head areas (eg: enterprise but there are others).

I still haven't got enough "ammo" to take on the CF nockers and until this is addressed it'll always be a "difficult" battle.

my 2c, nothing more.

Posted By barry.b / Posted on 03/16/2006 at 5:57 PM