Salesforce.com

Salesforce.com is putting on a great event on August 25 in San Mateo, California where you can learn about how to build RIAs on the Cloud with Flash Builder for Force.com. This will be a great opportunity to meet the team that built the tool and learn how to use it! If you can’t make it then check out the article I recently published “Building Client / Cloud Apps with Flash Builder for Force.com”. But if you are in the Bay Area and want to get up to speed quickly on building Client / Cloud apps then Register Now!

I have a theory. The majority of people who use enterprise software today use old school Client / Server apps. We’ve been trying to move these apps to the web for more than ten years. The ease of deployment of web apps is a clear motivator. Yet the client capabilities of the plain old web browser have not been sufficient for many apps to make the leap. This is why I love Flex and the Flash Platform. It provides a way to use web technologies and the web deployment model but adds many of the critical things needed for mission critical apps that people use all day long.

Client + Cloud technologies have been quickly evolving and maturing. The combination of Flex and Salesforce.com continue to lead the way for next generation Client + Cloud applications. Recently I did a Webinar on The Flash Platform and Salesforce.com with Dave Carroll from Salesforce. If you missed it you can watch the recording to see how you can begin developing Client + Cloud apps. Also watch Jeff Douglas demo an offline case management app he built with Flex and Force.com. Awesome stuff!

The combination of Flex and The Cloud is quickly becoming an IT and paradigm changing combination. Here are a number of recently published resources for learning more about this :

• An article I wrote has been published on the online Flash & Flex Developer’s Magazine: Flex and The Cloud: Is this really just Client/Server 2.0?
• I’ll be speaking on Thursday, February 18 2010 at the Denver Flex User Group about Flex and The Cloud
• The recording of a webinar I co-hosted on the new Salesforce.com Cloud platform for developers has been posted
• Jeff Douglas has posted a video walk through showing how to use the new Salesforce.com Flash Builder 4 extension for Flex + Cloud apps

Exciting stuff! Let me know what you think!

While at Dreamforce 2009 I was able to see some amazing enterprise Flex RIAs. Here is an RIA Cowboy Video of Right90‘s Sales Forecasting application. Let me know what you think.

On Thursday December 17th I’ll be doing an eSeminar about Salesforce.com and the Adobe Flash Platform. This is a great opportunity to learn more about how to build Flex RIAs on the Cloud using the new Flash Builder for Force.com tool. Sign up and see more details. Hope to see you there!

This week I’m in San Francisco at Dreamforce - Salesforce.com’s yearly conference. It’s amazing to walk around the expo hall and see how much Flex is being used in enterprise products and services. Like last year I’ve been recording some videos of some of the great enterprise Flex apps here. Also Greg Wilson has been tweeting a few pics of some of these apps including right90 (update: now a video instead of a pic) and PivotLink with more to come.

The two major trends transforming software right now are Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) and Cloud Computing / Software as a Service (SaaS or PaaS). These trends are driven by two needs:

• Full client capabilities, which allow software to perform optimally and increase usability

  • • Easy deployment, which allows developers to focus on business needs instead of building infrastructure
    The combination of RIA and Cloud is the future of software because it provides full client capabilities and easy deployment. The chart below illustrates this in comparison to the other major software architectures (main-frame, client / server, and web).

<img src="http://www.jamesward.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/RIA.png" alt="RIA" title="RIA" width="600" height="370" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1272" srcset="https://www.jamesward.com/uploads/2009/10/RIA.png 600w, https://www.jamesward.com/uploads/2009/10/RIA-300x185.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" />

In line with these trends Adobe and Salesforce.com [announced today][1] that they are working together to unite Rich Internet Applications and The Cloud. At the core of this announcement is a developer preview of the [Adobe Flash Builder for Force.com][2] tool. This tool enables developers to easily build intuitive user interfaces with Flex which connect to the Force.com cloud platform and Salesforce.com CRM data. These applications can be deployed either in the browser or on the desktop using Adobe AIR. When utilizing Adobe AIR, the applications can still function when users are disconnected. Later, when users reconnect, the changes are synchronized with Force.com using the LiveCycle Data Services synchronization engine.

Being able to connect Flex applications to Salesforce.com / Force.com has been possible (and easy) since I co-created what was originally called the [Flex Toolkit for Apex][3]. So while it has been possible to build Rich Cloud Applications for a few years, today's announcement is significant for a few reasons:

  * Adobe and Salesforce are now officially partnered together around Rich Cloud Applications
  * Much better, officially supported developer tooling
  * Much better offline data synchronization

It's really exciting to see how the vision of Rich Cloud Applications is becoming reality!

If you'd like to learn more or try out the new tooling check out these resources:

  * [Get the developer preview and watch video demos][2]
  * [Get inspired and see how it works][4]
  * [Watch a video walk-through][5]

Another great way to learn more is to sign up for a [Webinar / Tech Talk][6] that I will be co-presenting.

Let me know what you think about this exciting new partnership and developer tooling.

Combining the power of the cloud and the client allows developers to have the best of both worlds - easy deployment and full client capabilities. Salesforce.com’s cloud platform, called Force.com, and the Flash Platform are two proven and reliable choices for building these types of Rich Cloud Applications. Last week I co-hosted a webinar called “Developing Rich User Interfaces on Force.com Using Adobe Flex” in which Ryan Marples (from Salesforce.com) and I walked through the two platforms and how to use them together to build great software. If you didn’t have the chance to join the webinar then please go watch the recording and let us know what you think.

On August 27 I’ll be co-presenting a webinar - Developing Rich User Interfaces on Force.com Using Adobe Flex. This will be a great opportunity to learn more about combining Cloud and RIA to create software that works well for end users and significantly reduces IT costs. If this interests you then go sign-up now. Hope to “see” you on August 27th.