A cure for boring IT apps

One of the biggest contributors to the failure of enterprise applications is user acceptance, or lack thereof. And a major factor in users rejecting software from IT shops is, well, it's boring.

That may not be exactly the argument from Anthony Franco, president of EffectiveUI Inc. in Denver, but he does think IT has an opportunity to make more exciting "immersive applications" than they do today. He points to state-of-the-art tools from Adobe, like Air and Flex, and the impending Silverlight from Microsoft, that help developers write apps that appeal to users. (Check out this cool app EffectiveUI built for the Discovery Channel.) Such "user engagement," Franco contends, is not just about generating a lot of whiz-bang special effects. Rather, it is primarily about hard-nosed practical ROI needs. For example, he says, if you write rich-Internet applications (RIA) using Adobe Flex today, they run in the Flash player, which makes them cross-platform automatically. Plus, they can also run using Adobe Air, so the user does not have to be connected to a server to get work done. Trying to create cross-platform, compelling applications that free users from being tied to a network or server by any other means is too labor intensive, Franco claims.

There is one problem, he admits. There's a dearth of Flex developers today. And Silverlight remains in beta, so there's even fewer of those. Training your own staff is a good idea. If that's not possible, however, give EffectiveUI a ring. Franco's got 77 RIA experts ready to code. For a price, of course.