yeah Geoff, in theory spectra should have been a successful product. imho, it was the price structure and 'cost of implementation' that killed it - mainly the cost of implementation - as you needed a new skillset to capitalise on the product and the app kinda upped the bar on server specs too.
But you see Spectra *was* a successful product.. very successful in fact -- just not for Macromedia. When they took over Allaire they canned all products that required professional services.
Spectra was a toolbox -- you have to build something with it. It was not a solution. Macromedia was simply not geared up to support the platform directly through professional services and didn't put much stock in partners (at the time). They simplified their portfolio of products to concentrate on shipping boxes off the shelf -- with that they fired almost their entire professional services group and put the sword through the partner program. They were drastic times that called for drastic measures -- perhaps not all of them appropriate.
i'm seeing the exact same issues with flex...
The same issues are not present in Flex. Flex is a toolset that is unique in the market place (and things like Laszlo and XAMLON don't even come close at this time).
Flex builds on an existing empire -- the Flash Player empire. For Macromedia, Investment in Flex technology is an investment in Flash. Expect to see more and more Flex-based technology emerging in due course -- CF7 is just the first.
Spectra by comparison was a solution that leveraged CF -- not the other way around. Besides I don't see any evidence that Spectra couldn't have been a viable business for Macromedia -- it just would have been hard work, low margin and an investment that would not benefit other products in their portfolio. You can apply the same logic to SiteSpring.
When you are in the middle of a collapsing market seems perfectly rational (even good business) for Macromedia to drop those high effort low return products on the scrap heap and concentrate on where the real money is.
Having been involved in migrations from Spectra, Interwoven, Vignette and others I can tell you that Spectra had a lot more going for it than people realise.
So was Spectra a failure? I certainly don't think so. It was comparatively better technology for the price than most things in the market at the time. We built a good business selling and supporting the platform -- a platform that we continue to support for several clients even now.
It just wasn't a good enough prospect for ongoing success -- especially in what has turned into a comodity market dominated by excellent open source solutions :)
-- geoff http://www.daemon.com.au/
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