Cold Fusion: Enterprise ready?
Hi,
If you were buying a million dollar system that was going to be run/hosted by the company that was selling it to you, would the technology it is implemented in make a difference? If you'd narrowed down your systems providers to 2 candidates, both about the same price, one written in Cold Fusion and the other in either Java or .NET, would the technology sway you?
And what if the system was going to be installed and run (NOT maintained) in your Enterprise, would you allow a system writtten in Cold Fusion to be installed?
Clarification added July 13, 2007:
Thanks for your response Stephen.
What I failed to mention was I've inherited several millions of lines of Cold Fusion code across a whole range of products and I've now got to decide whether we continue to maintain the codebase, refactor the code base to use all of the features in
the latest version of Cold Fusion or just take the business rules/processes out of the Cold Fusion code and just re-write it in either .Net or J2EE.
We've traditionally sold most of our solutions to European and Asian customers where they're not particularily fussy. Given we're now looking to break into the USA and go after some bigger fish, and having worked in the USA for about 6 years, my suspicions are some of the bigger corporations would laugh at us with a CF solution. Hence my question ....
Clarification added July 19, 2007:
Thanks Ron, Dave, Trey, Don and Fawad. And a special big thanks to those of you who I don't know but still took the time to answer!
Really interesting answers and they have certainly given me food for thought. I'll let you all know how things go over the next 6 months.
cheers,
~luke
Good Answers (7)
Luke
CF has been fully enterprise capable for several years now. Anyone that tells you any different either has no idea what they're talking about or has another agenda (probably their own product).
You should also be aware that for several years, the ColdFusion server itself has been written in Java and can simply leverage the power of Java objects you might have or wish to use.
I'd be more than happy to use systems in the price range you mention that are based on ColdFusion. Provided, of course, that the warranties and SLAs from the provider meet your requirements.
Can I suggest you contact Sean Corfield from Scazu and speak with him? Sean is a pal of mine, ex-Adobe (and Macromedia) and one of the world's foremost ColdFusion experts.
Regards
Steve Collins
Stephen C also suggests these experts on this topic:
Mathew S
Sr. Systems Administrator at Synopsys
Best Answers in: Using LinkedIn (6), Staffing and Recruiting (5), Organizational Development (3), Computers and Software (3), Certification and Licenses (2), Personnel Policies (2), Internationalization and Localization (2), Offshoring and Outsourcing (2), Telecommunications (2), Wireless (2), Commercial Real Estate (1), Education and Schools (1), Occupational Training (1), Government Policy (1), Compensation and Benefits (1), Graphic Design (1), Sales Techniques (1), Writing and Editing (1), Change Management (1), Project Management (1), Quality Management and Standards (1), Personal Debt Management (1), Product Design (1), Career Management (1), Professional Networking (1), Databases (1), Web Development (1)
Coldfusion? Hmm Computerworld recently listed it as a declining skill
Links:
Richard L
CEO at Allyis, Inc. -- workplace technology projects and personnel specialists (rlaw@allyis.com)
Best Answers in: Career Management (7), Ethics (6), Education and Schools (4), Government Policy (3), Personal Investing (2), Professional Networking (2), Starting Up (2), Job Search (1), Resume Writing (1), Compensation and Benefits (1), Internationalization and Localization (1), Writing and Editing (1), Change Management (1), Organizational Development (1), Personal Taxes (1), Wealth Management (1), Blogging (1), Using LinkedIn (1)
Hi Luke, while Stephen may be right that those who knock Cold Fusion have another agenda, I can tell you simply from listening to those in the industry that Cold Fusion does indeed tend to be viewed as "old" or "niche" technology -- .NET and J2EE are certainly the more prevalent technologies now, which is also significant in thinking about where you will find resources to extend and maintain your applications going forward.
Simply go to a major job board like Monster and search on "Cold Fusion" and then on ".NET" and see how many job seekers you find who specialize in each. Generally the fewer specialists in something the more of a niche player it is AND the more expensive those resources become over time, to say nothing of the risk that support (new versions, patches, security updates, etc.) from the platform developer will erode as market share goes to other technologies.
Best of luck to you -- sounds like you've got some heavy lifting ahead in either scenario.
Richard
Hey Luke,
It's been a while. I'm glad you're doing well.
You have a couple of questions here. The way you initially describe the question the purchase sounds more like a service purchase than a software purchase. In that case the technology would not matter to me as much as service level agreements, etc. However, when you start talking about purchasing an application and running it in your own enterprise, that changes the game. I (and you are correct many US corporations) would be very hesitant to deploy a Cold Fusion application, especially if there was the chance that I may have to support it in the future. We work almost exclusively in Java and .Net. .Net is definitely enterprise ready and growing quickly. I would try to migrate to one of them if possible.
Eric E
CIO, EVP and Vital Services Practice Director at Vitalize Consulting Solutions
Best Answers in: Supply Chain Management (1), Starting Up (1), Biotech (1)
Luke,
If you had asked me this question several years ago I would have told you to start porting your application to J2EE or .NET as soon as possible.
I was previously the CIO for Cross Country Healthcare and we built many applications in both J2EE and .NET. Cold Fusion was always seen just as a "quick start" application development environment with bugs and performance ridden problems. It certainly was not something any "real" enterprise would use for software development.
Having said that, In the past several years my opinion has shifted after personally working with and consulting for a number of companies who had elected to use ColdFusion as their solution. These companies all have solid products with large volumes of users and transactions per day. Their applications are well designed, have high performance metrics and have scaled to meet growing business needs.
It is very important to note that these company applications have all been either built originally or recently ported to a newer version of ColdFusion that has been implemented on the J2EE framework.
Cold Fusion MX 7.2 has become a third viable and alternative solution to J2EE and .NET for businesses looking to develop rapid and scalable Web based applications. I would not say its the obvious first choice for new development projects, but if you do have a large system code base of Cold Fusion application, you should take a serious look at continuing to use it comfortably as a viable option.
The following description and information was extracted from the Adobe website and is their copyright material:
[About J2EE and the ColdFusion architecture]
As the Internet software market has matured, the infrastructure services required by distributed Internet applications, including ColdFusion applications, have become increasingly standardized. The most widely adopted standard today is the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) specification. J2EE provides a common set of infrastructure services for accessing databases, protocols, and operating system functionality, across multiple operating systems.
[About ColdFusion MX and the J2EE platform]
ColdFusion MX is implemented on the Java technology platform and uses a J2EE application server for many of its base services, including database connectivity, naming and directory services, and other runtime services. ColdFusion MX can be configured to use an embedded J2EE server (in the server configuration) or it can be deployed as a J2EE application on an independent J2EE application server (in the multiserver configuration or the J2EE configuration). ColdFusion MX Enterprise includes a fully featured version of the Macromedia JRun J2EE application server, or can be deployed on third-party J2EE servers such as IBM WebSphere and BEA WebLogic.
By implementing the ColdFusion scripting environment on top of the J2EE platform, ColdFusion MX takes advantage of the power of the J2EE platform while also providing an easy-to-use scripting environment and built-in services. Moreover, because ColdFusion is built on a J2EE platform, you can easily integrate J2EE and Java functionality into your ColdFusion application. As a result, ColdFusion pages can do any of the following:
• Share session data with JSPs (Java Server Pages) and Java servlets.
• Import custom JSP tag libraries and use them like ColdFusion custom tags.
• Integrate with Java objects, including the J2EE Java API, JavaBeans, and Enterprise JavaBeans.
I hope my perspective and this information has been helpful to you. I would be happy to discuss the matter with you further should desire.
Eric
Deane B
Content Management Professional; Editor, Gadgetopia
Best Answers in: Web Development (7), Computers and Software (3), Blogging (2), E-Commerce (2), Customer Relationship Management (1), Enterprise Software (1), Information Storage (1)
This isn't really an answer to the question, but I was interested enough in this question to blog about it at the link below.
Also, there's a link in that post to another about about PHP and Camaro's (seriously), which I think has a lot of similarities to the "does ColdFusion suck" question.
Links:
Hi Luke,
Some major organisations including Telco's, Banks and governemnt use CF all around the world. In relation to your US concerns, you're probably best off talking to Adobe, namely Tim Buntel (you can find him on LinkedIn) whom I'm sure will be able to provide you with a wide range of US based case studies.
We've recently deployed ColdFusion projects delivering cross platform (Java/.Net) integration using Web Services (SOAP), Instant Messaging (XMPP), XML and XHTML/CSS for some very highly trafficed sites.
CF has additionally worked fantastically with Agile principles by supporting the highest degree of RAD and change requests, areas which ultimately affect client satisfaction, SLAs and the bottom line.
ColdFusion offers clusterning and has no issue with load balancing and the soon to be released CF8 further supports .Net and Java integration and provides out of the box a new performance monitoring API and monitoring RIA application.
There are CF Open Source engines available such as Blue Dragon, Railo and many frameworks for developers to choose from, including those that heavily enforce OO principles so there is more to the CF Community than simply what Adobe offers.
Adobe ColdFusion's tight coupling with Flash, Flex, PDF & Adobe Connect along with support for COM, CORBA, LDAP, FTP, SMPT and much more out of the box show why it's a serious contender as a web development platform, not to mention a true enterprise platform.
Links:
More Answers (1)
Trey U suggests this expert on this topic:
Greg know cold fusion and might be able to give you some useful insight
