The new release of Silverlight closes the functionality gap with Adobe Flash. It offers a compelling value proposition for Microsoft-centric enterprises, and should be on the shortlist for any organization considering heavy rich Internet application (RIA) projects. This research provides enterprise CIOs, CTOs, Web managers, Web architects, and Web developers with context and recommendations related to the capabilities of Silverlight 3.0 and its impact in the RIA market.

• Silverlight is Microsoft's bet for the next-generation rich user experience (UX), built with .NET, both for classic RIA use cases and with v.3.0 for desktop applications that interact with the Internet.
• Silverlight is functionally equal to Flash for enterprise RIA use cases, while enabling greater productivity for .NET developers.
• SketchFlow, a design tool that fills a gap in Silverlight development, is an important addition to Microsoft's RIA tools portfolio.
• Although Silverlight's consumer market penetration is one-third that of Flash, key high-profile clients such as NBC Sports and MGM will stream broadcasts in Silverlight and will drive broader adoption of the browser plug-in.

• Before investing in RIA, ensure a user-centered design process, basing decisions on objective data about user behavior, and before choosing heavy RIA, ensure that lighter alternatives (such as ASP.NET Ajax) are insufficient.
• Evaluate Silverlight if you are considering a heavy RIA strategy for B2B or business-to-employee (B2E) applications, especially if you focus on Microsoft technologies, as it will unlock additional value from existing .NET investments.
• When targeting 100% cross-platform, cross-browser compatibility in a business-to-consumer (B2C) RIA project, consider alternatives to Silverlight, as it lags behind Flash in consumer market adoption.
• Experiment with SketchFlow even if you have no plans to adopt RIA, because it is a thought-leading product that begins to scratch the surface of transformational UX design workflow.

While the modern Web may evolve to include HTML 5 and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) 3.0 standards for a class of RIA, the leading-edge RIA capabilities of today are enabled by browser plug-ins. With the release of Silverlight 3.0, the battle for RIA dominance in the here and now is clearly delineated as a fight between Adobe and Microsoft. Enterprises should upgrade their opinions of Silverlight, but recognize that Flash has a superior track record and better market penetration.

On 10 July 2009, Microsoft shipped the final version of Silverlight v.3.0 (www.microsoft.com/silverlight ). This is the third release of the Silverlight platform, and it comes only 22 months after initial introduction of the product.

Microsoft Silverlight 3.0's capabilities for enterprise RIA and media applications put it on equal footing with Adobe Flash, and in some cases beyond. These new capabilities were showcased at the Microsoft Silverlight 3.0 launch event in San Francisco on 10 July 2009. In addition, Microsoft Expression Blend 3.0, a complementary design technology for simplifying the workflow associated with developing Silverlight RIAs, has been made available alongside the new Silverlight runtime. At the launch event, Microsoft presented several key customers who have made strategic commitments to the Silverlight platform, including media and business partners. Finally, the company articulated a strategy that puts Silverlight at the forefront for future .NET user interfaces (UIs).

The launch is important for organizations thinking about starting RIA projects, whether they are Microsoft .NET-centric enterprises or not. For .NET developers, Silverlight is a natural extension of what they already know how to do, and it will be a productive way for them to learn RIA development while leveraging existing enterprise investments in Microsoft resources. For enterprises not invested in .NET, the new release is a technological substitute for Adobe Flash and Flex, and new RIA initiatives should include both, as well as lighter-weight Ajax alternatives, in any proof-of-concept or evaluation process.

UX becomes a competitive differentiator once a technology crosses the chasm from early adopter to mainstream. The Web became mainstream around 10 years ago, and enterprises have adopted richer UX to maintain competitive parity (or achieve advantage) with online rivals. Although Gartner believes that roughly 80% of typical enterprise RIA use cases can be handled with simple Ajax, the balance requires a heavier solution like Adobe Flash, Adobe AIR, Microsoft Silverlight or Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).

The relatively small percentage of applications requiring dedicated runtime RIA technology to deliver immersive UX are mostly lumped into streaming media and use cases that deliver high degrees of interactivity, such as those found in many online games and data visualization applications. However, over time, the percentage of applications requiring the richer experiences characterized by RIA will increase as users become accustomed to snappier performance and more-attractive visuals, at least in the consumer-centric Web. Furthermore, penetration of RIA in the enterprise is still relatively low, as well as fractured among a variety of Ajax and RIA toolkits from a technology perspective, and most RIA investment has occurred in the consumer space. In both the B2C and B2E RIA markets, Adobe established itself as the early leader with its Flex and AIR technologies.

Adobe's strong position is due in part to a lack of credible competition. Prior versions of Silverlight are only installed on about one-third of Internet-connected devices, while Flash, the runtime supporting Flex, has a consumer market penetration approaching 100%. The initial release of Silverlight did little to challenge Adobe's place in the market; recognizing this, Microsoft rebuilt Silverlight from the ground up as of version 2, incorporating .NET and WPF. Silverlight 3.0, released only 22 months after the initial release of Silverlight 1, is evidence of how hard Microsoft has worked to catch up to Adobe. Microsoft was able to move quickly because the Silverlight product repurposes already-developed technologies, such as WPF, Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), .NET, and Photosynth.

Silverlight 3.0 is a runtime and a platform enabling the development and execution of .NET and WPF-based RIAs. It is a direct competitor to Adobe Flex, and as of version 3.0, it is also a direct competitor to Adobe AIR, because Silverlight 3.0 applications can run both inside and outside the browser without a separate installation process. From a capability perspective, Silverlight's enhancements can be grouped into two primary areas: media-centric and application-centric.

Media companies or enterprises interested in exploring immersive media experiences will find a lot to like about Silverlight. In Silverlight v.2.0, Microsoft introduced the concept of "adaptive bit rate," which automatically scales the resolution of live, streaming media from Internet Information Server (IIS) to Silverlight clients, depending on the performance characteristics of the server, network and connected client, effectively incorporating a degree of quality-of-service management into the product. This opened up a temporary gap between Microsoft and Adobe, which introduced adaptive streaming in Flash Player 10, which also added graphics processing unit (GPU) acceleration. Silverlight v.3.0 adds support for 1080 progressive scan (p) high-definition (HD) video, and enables video acceleration using the GPU, including enhanced capabilities for Deep Zoom that leverage Microsoft's patented Photosynth technology for dynamically scaling images across many CPU cores, and an extensible codec pipeline enabling support for third-party video formats. Although Deep Zoom makes for a dramatic demo, it will be some time before enterprises make practical use of this technology.

Enterprises and independent software vendors (ISVs), especially those already versed in .NET technology, interested in developing B2B and B2E RIA applications will likely take advantage of the features in Silverlight 3.0, which also are aimed at the productivity of the developers creating them. Microsoft has open sourced a package of more than 60 controls, providing a basis for experimentation and advancement of custom controls for use in enterprise RIA projects. In addition, Silverlight 3.0 includes significant enhancements to data binding; for example, validation attributes added to a business object cascade through to the UI layer. The out-of-browser execution capability introduced in Silverlight 3 appeals to developers that want total control over the UX and want to deliver a UI that does not resemble a browser. Unfortunately, this is not always a positive attribute, from an end-user perspective, because it can add to the learning curve when encountering a new application. A key value of RIA technology is offline mode, the ability to run custom applications when disconnected from the Internet. Silverlight allows an application to update with live data from the Internet and to hold onto a local copy for offline use, much as Adobe's AIR offering does. The advantages that Silverlight offers over AIR are that the Silverlight application running inside the browser is identical to the one running outside the browser, including identical code bases for ease of maintenance, and Silverlight's more-restrictive security model is less-vulnerable to exploitation than that of AIR (although AIR has been deployed widely in consumer-facing applications and thus far has a good real-world track record in the area of security).

Microsoft SketchFlow, announced at MIX 2009 only four months ago, is a feature of Expression Blend 3.0 aimed at improving the workflow between designers, developers and other stakeholders. Although Expression Blend 3.0 includes a range of interesting features, SketchFlow jumps off the page as an important innovation that bears scrutiny. Microsoft has analyzed the typical development process, identifying an important gap often overlooked even by the staunchest of practitioners (see Figure 1):

Although the "designer developer" workflow has been a concern addressed by Microsoft, Adobe and specialist vendors like Balsamiq and iRise, SketchFlow improves upon existing approaches. A UI designer can start with a paper prototype, which is a good low-investment, low-fidelity way to rapidly iterate design changes with the assistance of project stakeholders. Once the paper prototype is "good enough," it can be scanned or photographed and imported into SketchFlow (alternatively, the designer can skip the paper prototyping step entirely).

Once in SketchFlow, designers can replace drawn artifacts with actual Silverlight controls that are "skinned" to look hand-drawn to highlight the fact that a UI design is not a finished product. This has the effect of keeping stakeholder focus on functionality, instead of on look and feel at an early stage of design. The designer can now participate in more rounds of iteration, and when ready, can export the design to a developer who can import it directly into a Visual Studio project.

In addition to providing a canvas for rapid iteration with stakeholders and eventual delivery of produced artifacts to developers in a seamless process, SketchFlow enables designers to quickly generate reports of designs and progress made. These designs are exported to Word and look similar to PowerPoint slides; each slide represents one state of one particular page of the application. Producing such a report in the middle of the design phase of an agile project would be a difficult burden without a tool like SketchFlow, which largely automates the process.

Silverlight is Microsoft's big bet for the next generation of its software, and the latest release eliminates any questions about the company's commitment to the platform. The pacing of its releases and the depth of detail with which Microsoft has attacked the RIA problem provide evidence of this strategy. Microsoft knows that the Web is here to stay, and that the friction-free deployment enabled by the Web is a key value driver for consumers and enterprises. At the same time, Microsoft business agenda remains committed to system components running on a local client; Silverlight provides the enabling technology for realizing this commitment while leveraging the ubiquity of the Web. Microsoft's brand and business development efforts have led to a few high-profile customer wins like NBC Sports, which will stream the 2010 Winter Games with Silverlight, and MGM, which will stream its upcoming Stargate shows (as well as other properties) with Silverlight — these usage scenarios will expose more consumers to the plug-in and will expand market penetration.

Adobe is the incumbent in the RIA space and has wide adoption among media designers and developers, but Microsoft has several capability and asset advantages in addition to some aspects (.NET centricity, plug-in requirement) that will be viewed as negatives by some portions of the market. First, Microsoft has decades of history as a platform company, an area that Adobe gained exposure to after the 2005 Macromedia acquisition. Microsoft can leverage a large .NET developer community in promoting Silverlight, and Microsoft controls a variety of platforms upon which Silverlight can run as a first-class citizen, including Windows and Windows Mobile. The company has significant balance sheet and revenue advantages over Adobe, and can dramatically out-spend on R&D and marketing if it chooses. Despite Microsoft's advantages, Flash is the defending champion because it delivers value for consumers and enterprises, and Adobe's ability to innovate Flash's richness and reach should not be overlooked. For example, Adobe was the first vendor to deliver a desktop-resident RIA client with AIR. Compared to Silverlight, Adobe has a much greater track record in high-profile, high-traffic, brand-intensive deployments.

Microsoft Silverlight has achieved technological parity with Flash for enterprise RIA. Silverlight 3.0 frames the struggle for RIA dominance as one between Microsoft and Adobe. Future challenges will emerge from the "modern Web," an amalgamation of standards and techniques, including HTML 5, CSS 3.0 and Ajax, but, in the meantime, leading RIA capabilities are available from proprietary technologies. Enterprises embarking on heavy RIA projects should consider Silverlight a near-term alternative with confidence that Microsoft will support the technology long term. This development means that enterprises and consumers win; the market has more choices for technology that enables great RIA applications that provide business value and satisfy customer needs. Despite improvements in technology and the release of eye-catching demos, enterprises should avoid the first mistake in RIA projects: choosing technology at the start of a project rather than after requirements are defined and a functional design is assembled out of proven user interaction design patterns. Fancy technology, whether from Microsoft, Adobe or some other vendor, should not blind development teams to the need for basing designs on objectively observed user behavior tied to business priorities.