Andrew's ramblings

Is Coldfusion a viable option for an Enterprise Application?

Tags: Coldfusion

The answer is it is, one of the major things that has been improved over time is that Coldfusion gets optimized each and every release.

But there is a downside that larger companies seem to be all adopting, and it is no longer Coldfusion.

Why is that?

First I am going to make this clear, I am not bagging Adobe nor am I having a go at the product. I am voicing the reality of the market trend.

So what are the problems, well there are a few that are can be mentioned but the important ones are, Cost and how fast technology is moving.

Let me first discuss the cost, pure and simple it is a very good product but the cost of the license is let down by what it can deliver and what the product is. There is a huge momentum towards open source software, and Coldfusion can not compete on an Enterprise level because of the cost of the Enterprise license.

And the open source momentum, brings me to the next part of the problem. Coldfusion is tied into a closed application, that is not easy to upgrade any of the technologies within it.

What are my reasons for saying that, ok lets look at Coldfusion 8 one of the best features of it is the fact it has gone with supporting tags that allow quick Ajax web2.0 style widgets. However, the problem with not being an open sourced engine is that you can't override this feature. Which means that when YUI and extJS are updated, Coldfusion can't be easily adopted to the new enhancements of this technology.

I can understand that the cost of Coldfusion needs to include the cost of the license within the bounds of Coldfusion, but that is its downfall. And from smaller websites or even SME type intranet applications, a developer can create and deploy a website cheaply and host it somewhere without having to pay for the license.

Enterprise solutions are different, and although you can install as many instances as the sever can handle of Coldfusion, you need a separate license for each physical machine and the costs start to sky rocket.

The proof is that I have witnessed an Enterprise application being developed in Java, and not only does it incorporate open source software we are active in those projects. So if we come across a problem, we can either get the support we need, have a patch made for it and incorporate it into the application and provide the patch for consideration to the project developers.

With Coldfusion you can't do this, and that is critical for what we as a company need to achieve. And why I know that unless a new direction is taken with Coldfusion, we just may see the end of Coldfusion Enterprise.

This is not made lightly, I love Coldfusion and its simplicity and rapid development. But as a developer I can not be have my eyes closed, and as much as I love the product it has serious limitations in the Enterprise market.

Which is so unfortunate....

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