Flash is Dead — and so is Client-side Java
The founders of Monolith Software spent the better part of a decade working with the products of the industry’s legacy leaders in the monitoring & management space. Judging from the freely-offered comments made by customers over the years, users of established software packages were adamant and unanimous in their frustration with having to rely on signed clients or browsers with Active-X or JRE (java runtime engines) in order to use the software.
When we decided to start a software company, we took what seemed to be a logical approach – building software that responds to the needs of the user community. We didn’t see this as a particularly novel or unconventional strategy. However, when you honestly evaluate the response of the industry to these concerns, the strategy actually appears somewhat unique.
About four years ago we needed to make a presentation layer decision. There were three common approaches being utilized by our competitors:
- Our legacy competitors were using Java, which everyone hated because of compatibility/speed/efficiency issues
- Newer competitors were backing Flash, which was proprietary to Adobe and was more bandwidth intensive
- Some were still pushing signed clients in order to use their software
At Monolith Software we decided to back industry STANDARDS. We ended up leveraging a standard browser interface with SVG for the presentation capabilies. As anyone following this space knows, HTML5 is essentially just that. It’s nice to see some solid validation for the decision we made years ago: Flash is suffering, HTML5 is gaining momentum. Don’t just take our word for it: look at what the folks at Apple are doing, and why. Well-defined and developed universal standards will almost always represent less risk to a company, and eventually better performance and compatibility, than a proprietary product like Flash.
That decision has allowed Monolith users greater flexibility: they can access Monolith freely on any web-enabled mobile device. So, for instance, a Monolith user can access IT dashboards from an iPhone or iPad without licensing any app.
You can access more info on our standard architecture here.
Technorati Tags:
Flash, HTML5, IT Dashboards, Monolith Software
As I type this message from my iPad, i have to say that I couldn’t agree more. We are constantly having to fight with different versions of java to support all of our various native NMS systems. Its refreshing to see the approach that you guys are taking.
thanks for the comment Nick. we’ll keep working on bringing fresh new perspectives to the market!