Macromedia today announced the rapid adoption of Macromedia Flex and the availability of Macromedia Flex Builder, a new integrated development environment (IDE) designed to streamline Flex application development.
Since its initial release in late March, more than 40 organizations including Lockheed Martin, PC Connection, Telus, the University of Pennsylvania, and the United States Senate have become Flex customers. Flex helps organizations unlock the full potential of strategic applications by delivering a more engaging, effective user interface with less effort than traditional page-based web technology.
To further drive adoption and success, Macromedia introduced the next addition to the Flex product line, Flex Builder. Designed to accelerate all aspects of rich Internet application development including interface layout, coding, debugging, and deployment, Flex Builder makes it easier for teams to learn Flex faster and produce more results in less time. Flex Builder offers a design view for visual interface layout, a robust MXML and ActionScript code editor, and sophisticated debugging capabilities to ensure quality results.
“We’re seeing a renaissance in enterprise application development that has been catalyzed by Flex and is now moving into the mainstream,” said David Mendels, senior vice president, Macromedia. “The applications Flex users have deployed are turning heads around the world and extending the boundaries of what was previously thought possible, both in user experience and development workflow.”
Organizations use Flex to add more effective interfaces to a variety of strategic applications including visual data dashboards that deliver more insight in less time, interactive product configurators and streamlined shopping carts that help users navigate complex e-commerce tasks, and customer self-service applications that reduce costly call center traffic.
Optimal Payments, Inc., a global provider of payment processing services, used Flex to develop a single interface that combines their existing customer relationship management (CRM) system and an internally developed change management system. The development team found that Flex enables them to build a more appealing and effective interface in less time, using 35 percent less code, than other solutions.
“With Flex, we combined two systems into one, unified, easy to use system,” said David Jokinen, vice president of product development, Optimal Payments. “We’ve eliminated installation and maintenance headaches associated with our previous thick client solution and boosted productivity by streamlining internal processes and reducing data duplication.”
Zones, Inc., a direct marketing reseller of information technology products, turned to Flex to create a rich Internet application that streamlines quote generation for its sales force. Since the application is so easy to use, Zones expects a reduction in turnover in their sales staff in addition to the training time they save.
“The application integrates with CRM and ERP systems, as well as our Oracle database, and will help us significantly reduce end-user training time,” said Anwar Jiwani, chief information officer, Zones. “Flex enables us to deliver an application that streamlines our critical sales processes in a way that just wasn’t possible with traditional web technology.”
Flex Builder has been rapidly adopted and used by many early Flex developers in beta testing. Early users value the productivity gains Flex Builder brings to Flex development.
“We’re using Flex Builder and Flex to develop the presentation tier for a J2EE enterprise application and the development team has found Flex Builder to be a flexible, robust tool,” said Steve Pruit, software architect, Exstream Software. “We were able to rapidly build the user interface by switching between code and design views, and the large family of MXML components made the task more accessible. Flex Builder also helps us manage the site by keeping our server code base in synch across the development team.”
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