Survey Results

1
Survey Results

• by Leon Chalnick
• Of

www.AdvantaSolutions.com
2
Business Background

• Allaire indicates poor Q3 results
• Allaire indicates problems result from
• Transition to multi-product company
• Long sales cycles for Spectra
• Slowdown in CF sales
• Lawsuits ensue
• SCCFUG members express concern

3
Survey Background

• Intent was to
• Determine how other Allaire users felt about
  Allaires products/strategies and related
  technologies
• Provide useful feedback to our members and other
  interested parties
• Avoid creating opinions
• I wrote the initial survey and the SCCFUG board
  reworked the questions in about 4 iterations

4
Who Took the Survey?

• Invitations were sent to CF-TALK, CF-COMMUNITY,
  SPECTRA-TALK, JRUN-TALK and the CFUG Managers
  list
• Slant towards ColdFusion
• Slant towards knowledgeable, opinionated
  developers

5
Executive Summary

• Respondentslargely experienced ColdFusion
  developersbelieve Allaire can improve its
  performance in the next year, but the degree of
  confidence is hardly overwhelming. There is
  moderate support for an Allaire focus on
  Java-based tools, though many respondents were
  unclear on Allaires vision and plans along these
  lines.
• While there is very solid support for ColdFusion
  and JRun as tools that should figure into
  Allaires strategy, there is only weak support
  for Spectra. In fact, almost a third of the
  respondents indicated that Spectra should not
  even be an equal participant in Allaires product
  strategy.
• Both COM and EJB appear to play an underwhelming
  role in developers plans for the near future.

6
Respondent Profile

• 686 respondents
• Allaire customer for 2 years 8 months
• About ¼ were Allaire partners
• continues

7
Product Usage

• 128 Other
• 41 ASP
• 18 Java or JSP
• Perl / PHP / VB

8
Respondent Occupations
9
Confidence in Allaire

• 66 expressed some confidence
• Only 39 agreed strongly or completely
• Partners expressed confidence at a slightly lower
  rate than non-partners (63 compared to 67)

10
Support for Products

• ColdFusion
• 90 indicated CF was extremely important in
  Allaires strategy
• While over 95 are using, only 87 indicated they
  would definitely be using
• JRun
• 1/3 felt it was extremely important
• 2/3 felt it was at least somewhat important
• More people see usage in next 12 months than
  using now

11
Support for Products cont.

• Spectra
• Used by about 13
• About 16 said it is extremely important
• However almost 30 said Spectra should not play
  as important a role as CF or JRun
• Less than 3 felt that way about CF
• Only 68 of the 92 who use Spectra said they
  expect to use it in next 12 months

12
Allaires Java Plans

• About 50 said that to some degree, they were not
  clear
• Less than 1/3 expressed any degree of clarity

13
Importance of Java

• Recognition of Javas importance, but not
  overwhelming
• Over 40 like a focus on Java-based tools
• But over half have no plans for EJB and less than
  half indicate plans to use JRun in next 12 months

14
Importance of COM and EJB

• Only less than 25 plan to use COM
• Even less interest (18) in EJB

15
Qualitative Responses

• 177 out of 686. More negative than positive.
• Themes
• Focus on CF
• Allaire products not stable. Allaire should focus
  on fixing bugs and improve docs.
• CF ease of use a major benefit
• Java probably important but not clear
• CF priced too high (only a few said this)

16
Conclusions

1. Allaire and its supporters can take heart that
   the majority of the respondents expressed some
   confidence that Allaire can improve its
   performance.
2. Allaire needs to shore up support for and usage
   of ColdFusion.
3. Allaire should not look for much growth of
   Spectra among CF developers. It has not been
   adopted by many CF developers and does not have a
   great deal of support among them.
4. Allaire needs to clearly define the role of Java
   in its future plans and products. Its hardcore
   developers see Java technology as somewhat
   important and relevant to them but do not have a
   clear understanding of the role Java will play in
   Allaires products.