That's an interesting perspective that I hadn't considered. I guess the fact that we have a free version (including one that now supports CFCs, XML, and Web Services), could give the impression that BD is a "poor man's CF". (I'm not sure what you mean by "its ilk" since I don't think there's anything quite like BlueDragon on the market).
But the majority of BlueDragon sales have been to enterprise-level customers who are deploying on J2EE servers. They're finding that BD provides better "native" integration with the J2EE platform than CFMX (an area where we're different!), and are using BD to improve the robustness, performance, and scalability of their CFML applications. These are also the customers who are asking of for features that aren't in CFMX. So it turns out that BD is primarily (at this point anyway), a "rich man's CF" for enterprise-level customers. If you're not such a customer, I could see why you'd have missed this and might be less interested in BD. As far as BD being a "competitive alternative" to CFMX, I don't really look at it that way. Our goal is to have BD do things that CFMX can't do, in order to give people the opportunity to use CFML where they otherwise might be forced to use a different technology. For example, we have customers who needed to move to a J2EE environment and first did an analysis of CFMX and determined it didn't meet their needs. They were preparing to rewrite their application into JSP when they discovered BlueDragon. Now they're continuing to use CFML instead of converting to JSP. I see that as a win for the customer, for New Atlanta, and for the entire CFML community (and yes, even a win for Macromedia, who now has an opportunity to "win back" that customer in the future; if the customer had converted to JSP, they'd have been lost as a CFML customer forever). Similarly, there are people who are considering rewriting their existing CFML applications in ASP.NET; with BlueDragon.NET we'll give these people the alternative to continue using CFML in the .NET environment. Anyway, sorry if this is a little "marketing-ish", but you seem to be expressing some negative (contemptuous, even?) views of BlueDragon that I think are unwarranted. Regards, Vince Bonfanti New Atlanta Communications, LLC http://www.newatlanta.com > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of adam > Sent: Thursday, March 18, 2004 2:23 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: RE: [CFCDev] OT: BD / CF > > > >Why is this a slippery slope? Are you saying we shouldn't provide > features our customers are asking for simply because they're > not implemented in Macromedia's products? The very reason > they're asking us for them is because they're not implemented > in Macromedia's products! > > I guess it's just my outlook/opinion of BD (and its ilk). I > see it as a "poor man's CF", rather than an competitive > alternative, so I figure it should just do *exactly* the same > thing, just cheaper. > > I also guess that's not where you see yourself positioned, > so... yeah, fair call... Knock yourself out: be different. > > Adam > ---------------------------------------------------------- You are subscribed to cfcdev. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the words 'unsubscribe cfcdev' in the message of the email. CFCDev is run by CFCZone (www.cfczone.org) and supported by Mindtool, Corporation (www.mindtool.com). An archive of the CFCDev list is available at www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
