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Analysts at Gartner Praise CF

May 14, 2009 4:47 PM

Mark Driver recently published a Gartner analyst note on ColdFusion which recommends that agencies and companies continue their investment in CF, as it has a strong future with Adobe and is continuing to grow its market.

The Gartner ColdFusion note can be downloaded from adobe.com for free.

Other quotes from Mark in the note:

"...ColdFusion can provide unique value that is not fully addressed by any competing alternative technology. Most notably, ColdFusion is unmatched by any competitor for ease of use and technical capabilities. When we combine this with cross-platform deployment,and significant integration into both Java and .NET, ColdFusion stands out as a compelling solution for many IT challenges."

"ColdFusion provides a potential wrapper around the complexity of Java, providing Web developers access to the power of the Java platform via the productivity of a fourth-generation language (4GL)."

"ColdFusion is nearly unique in the industry because it provides a balance of ease of use and advanced features that can support "entry level" business unit application developers, as well as "advanced" centralized IT development teams."

"We also believe ColdFusion will play a pivotal role in Adobe's Flash Platform (www.adobe.com/flashplatform). Developers with investments in Flash, Flex, Air, BlazeDS and PDF Forms will find ColdFusion an integral supporting player in this technology family."

Mark recommends you ...

"Consider This Product When

• You need to deliver robust Web applications, and alternatives such as .NET or Java are overkill

• You are invested in Java and Java EE, and need developer productivity to better your investment in Java

• You need to augment an otherwise heavily Java-centric IT strategy with a Web application layer that provides a higher level of developer productivity; integration with Java is particularly tight since ColdFusion applications are literally compiled into Java code for runtime execution

• You need to augment an otherwise heavily .NET-centric IT strategy with a platform that can be deployed to Linux and Unix, while retaining tight connectivity and integration with the Microsoft technology ecosystem

• You need to integrate Web applications with online Adobe Forms, or provide back-end processing to Flex and Air RIAs"

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William from Lagos's Gravatar
Aren't there any links to the report?
Posted By William from Lagos | 5/15/09 4:46 AM
Gary Gilbert's Gravatar
Its a gartner research report. If you want to read the entire report you have to pay for it.

Here is the link to the report: http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=1651...
Posted By Gary Gilbert | 5/15/09 6:16 AM
Marko Simic's Gravatar
To anyone looks for official/original resource of this information
http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=1651...

But you won't see much there because it's commercial report. This has value only as confirmation.
Posted By Marko Simic | 5/15/09 6:17 AM
Mike Rankin's Gravatar
Unfortunately, I generally don't give Gartner any credibility. They do research for hire and always seem to conclude that the outfit that is paying them is correct. Go figure. And then, they have the nerve to sell their report at inflated prices after they've already been paid.
Posted By Mike Rankin | 5/15/09 9:07 AM
Kristen Schofield's Gravatar
Thanks for publishing the links here.. I will add to the report. I did this post at the end of my day yesterday.

@Mike - Gartner is available to companies and agencies looking for 3rd party recommedations on technology choices. In those cases it's the customers that are hire/pay Gartner, not vendors like Adobe. For Notes like this one, these are completely a Gartner activity. Adobe did not solicit, pay or hire Gartner for this report.

We are looking into getting rights to distribute the report freely.. if we do, I will post the report for all of your use/distribution.
Posted By Kristen Schofield | 5/15/09 10:45 AM
ryanth's Gravatar
About time! We would not be where we are today with out the RAD, stability, performance and technology integration of ColdFusion. With 70-80 million page views a month it rocks. We've integrated with open source Java packages from multiple sources, integrate with .Net a number of ways and consume multiple services from multiple vendors. We've not met a challenge we could not solve with CF.
Posted By ryanth | 5/15/09 11:54 AM
gary gilbert's Gravatar
@Ryanth,

great to see such an important site like the mayo clinic using Coldfusion, and I am also equally impressed by the fact that you are using Farcry for your CMS!
Posted By gary gilbert | 5/15/09 1:39 PM
Kristen Schofield's Gravatar
I think Mayo Clinic has been a big CF customer since the very early versions pre-dating v3 perhaps? we always visit Mayo when we do research for next revs and get tons of good feedback.

@Gary we have lots of impressive folks like Mayo using CF, not all *as* impressive as Mayo of course ;) Check out the evang kit for a good list of them. It's located http://www.adobe.com/go/cfkit
Posted By Kristen Schofield | 5/15/09 1:46 PM
Aaron Neff's Gravatar
Nice! Obtaining rights, for free distribution of this, would be a good investment - IMO.
Posted By Aaron Neff | 5/16/09 1:46 AM
Jeremy Prevost's Gravatar
We have an institutional subscription to Gartner so I was able to read the report.

One "Challenge" the report lists is actually decreasingly relevant. "Proprietary technology with lock-in to one vendor (Adobe)". The report was titled "Adobe ColdFusion: Past, Present and Future"... you'd think if they were peering into the future they'd see that CFML is no longer reliant upon one vendor (i.e. if Adobe were to kill off ColdFusion development, which I'm sure they won't, CFML development would not necessarily die along with it).
Posted By Jeremy Prevost | 5/18/09 12:20 PM
David McGuigan's Gravatar
I happen to love proprietary lock-in to one product when that product happens to be the best in its class. I hope ColdFusion throws away my key.
Posted By David McGuigan | 5/20/09 12:16 AM
evangelize coldfusion and the platform
Thanks to Ray Camden for blogCFC and to David McGuigan for my blog design.
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