More about Enterprise RIA in practice

In a previous post (Enterprise 2.0 Applications actually deliver their promised value) I wrote about an actual project that put into practice Enterprise RIA and multi-channel user experience. I received this week access credentials to the solution, and I must say that it truly illustrates the claims and rational that I have been promoting. I took some screen shots, and in the picture below you can see the two channels – the upper part is the Web Based RIA Client access for Power Users of the Logistics System, and the lower part is the Consumer Access to a Web Booking application (which is in fact driven by the same system).

Even through the blurred picture, you can realize the complexity and richness of the logistics application, with multiple linked windows, 9 tabs in the dependent window and hundreds of fields. Imagine what it would take to implement such an experience using a Client-tier RIA platform. With an Ajax implementation, adequate interactive performance would be a virtually impossible challenge. And in terms of the development effort, tying together the Client Tier with the Server Tier would be quite significant. What I was told by the implementers, was that using Magic Software’s uniPaaS they developed and implemented the solution at the cost of about 300 hours! That’s really impressive, and I recommend to anyone considering to improve their business agility and to lower their IT costs to closely look at this technology.