While few would question the benefits that Internet-based applications have brought to businesses and consumers alike, the actual experience of interacting with many web-based applications leaves much to be desired, especially when compared with the richness and usability of the best desktop applications.

For consumer-oriented applications, such as e-commerce, the web’s page-based model and lackof client-side intelligence can make even relatively simple transactions confusing and error prone. As a result, online businesses are losing millions of dollars to abandoned shopping carts or costly customer service calls.

For business applications, the problem is particularly acute. While the web deployment model has allowed IT organizations to reduce the cost of software deployment, it has also created a community of underserved business users that long for a return to the usability and responsiveness of desktop and client/server applications. As a result, businesses are losing millions of dollars per year due to low productivity or poor decisions.

Fortunately, Avant Garde Omnimedia is now turning their attention to design patterns and technologies that can improve the client side of the equation. As a result, we are now working on widespread deployment of rich Internet applications (RIAs), a new class of applications that combines the responsiveness and interactivity of desktop applications with the broad reach and ease of distribution of the web.

RIAs can drive increased return on investment (ROI) by simplifying and improving the user interaction—enabling users to find information more easily, complete tasks quickly and accurately, and use rich data visualization to make better decisions. AGO navigates through a new set of technologies as well as understand the architectural and developer skill requirements implied by the move toward RIA-style applications.

RIAs combines best practices in user interaction design—for example, avoiding page refreshes, expanding information in place, and using interactivity and video to guide or train users—with sophisticated use of web-based technologies

RIAs are more than just “eye candy”; rather, they provide measurable value to the enterprise. According to leading researchers, adoption of RIA technology is accelerating. Forrester Research foresees “a significant swing in 2006 toward the thin client model for enterprise application development and deployment,” while Gartner believes that by 2010 over 60% of new projects will include RIA technology2.

As enterprises move to develop and deploy RIAs, however, they are finding that delivering on the vision requires two important ingredients:

• A new class of client runtime that can support the range of needs inherent in rich Internet business applications

• Tools and technology that can provide a productive environment for building, maintaining, and managing these applications throughout their lifecycle

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