JavaScriptSearch Wednesday, May 10, 2006; 04:15 AM
OpenAjax, an open industry collaboration dedicated to developing
and expanding Ajax, announced 13 new members -- expanding its
participation to 28 companies. The OpenAjax members intend to promote
Ajax's promise of universal compatibility with any computer device,
application, desktop or operating system, and easy incorporation into
new and existing software programs as well as foster Ajax's growth. Created February 2006, OpenAjax is a collaboration among
leading technology and software businesses to expand Ajax adoption and
evolve tools and runtimes that will significantly reduce the
development costs and skills required to incorporate Ajax Technology
into Web Applications. Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript + XML) is a
fast-growing technology that businesses are incorporating into their
external and internal Web sites to simplify the browsing experience,
and make it easier for users to shop, work, plan, correspond and
navigate online. As a leading open software technology, Ajax makes it
unnecessary to manually refresh a browser to send or receive
information over the Web. Therefore, it can reduce the steps needed to
complete a transaction over the Web or create a competitive edge for
enterprise companies and Web designers. Additionally, Ajax enables Web
Clients to bind to back-end servers using XML as well as the Ajax
clients can call Web based Services creating mashups.
New OpenAjax members announced today include, Adobe, Backbase, Fair
Isaac, ICEsoft, Innoopract, Intel, JackBe, Opera, SAP, Scalix, Software
AG, Tibco and XML11. These new members join the initial members,
including BEA, Borland, the Dojo Foundation, Eclipse Foundation,
Google, IBM, Laszlo Systems, Mozilla Corporation, Novell, Openwave
Systems, Oracle, Red Hat, Yahoo!, Zend and Zimbra.
The OpenAjax community plans to promote a vision of a common Ajax
platform within the industry. The OpenAjax members plan to meet in
mid-May 2006 at a Summit to discuss the present usage of Ajax, its
growth into new markets and then create a business and technical
roadmap by which the OpenAjax companies can work toward more universal
Ajax support across the desktop and mobile devices.
New Member Quotes:
Adobe
"Ajax has re-ignited the imagination and potential of applications on
the web. It's critical that we come together as an industry and define
tools and frameworks that integrate seamlessly with each other, and how
developers work," said Todd Hay, director of platform marketing, Adobe.
"Adobe is firmly committed to supporting developers in delivering these
rich Internet applications, and has already released a number of open
technologies for integrating Flash, Flex and Ajax. As part of OpenAjax,
Adobe furthers its commitment to Ajax, making it easier to use for
building rich Internet applications."
Backbase
"As the leading provider of Ajax-based Rich Internet Applications
software and solutions, Backbase's strategy for developer tooling has
always been to utilize open standards and extend developers' preferred
IDEs," says Mark Schiefelbein, VP of Product Development for Backbase.
"We are pleased to be working together with other industry leaders in
supporting the OpenAjax initiative, providing developers with a
standardized tools palette that will help advance and speed the
adoption of Ajax."
Fair Isaac
"Fair Isaac Corporation sees the adoption AJAX technologies by the
Blaze Advisor™ business rules management system as a way to build
smart, interactive applications. The Blaze Advisor system can be used
across a variety of customer-facing applications where accuracy of data
input is critical and where data collection and validation rules are
numerous, highly changeable or complex. SmartForms for Blaze Advisor
validates entry in required input fields, taps the processing power of
AJAX to speed response, and ensures data integrity and compliance."
James Taylor, marketing vice president, Enterprise Decision Management
Technologies
ICEsoft
"ICEsoft views standards as critical for our customers success as well
as a foundation for innovation," said Chris Erickson, CEO of ICEsoft
Technologies, Inc. "We look forward to actively participating in Open
Ajax to create standards and to extend ICEfaces, our enterprise Ajax
solution for Java EE, to meet our customers rapidly evolving needs."
Innoopract
"Ajax is a great concept to increase the interactivity of Web
applications. But to foster a wide spread adoption we still need an
efficient and reliable programming model for Ajax," says Jochen Krause
CEO of Innoopract. "Our proposal for the Rich Ajax Platform (RAP)
adopts the well-known Eclipse programming model used for Rich Client
Applications and couples it with a rapid development model based on
Java components."
JackBe
"As an Ajax pioneer, JackBe is thrilled to bring its deep Ajax and SOA
expertise to the Open Ajax movement," said Luis Derechin, chief
executive officer of JackBe. "Open Ajax enables enterprises to move
beyond lower-level toolkit decisions into the larger business value of
Ajax. JackBe combines Ajax with SOA technologies and services to
improve the usability, productivity and functionality of Web
applications, and we look forward to collaborating with other Open Ajax
members to ensure that Ajax fulfills its promise -- helping enterprises
worldwide to advance the online experience."
Opera
"The Opera browser enables AJAX to reach beyond the desktop to mobile
phones, game consoles, set-top boxes, portable media players and other
devices," said Scott Hedrick, EVP Devices, Opera Software ASA. "With
Opera 9, we have introduced AJAX-based widgets and we are seeing an
explosion of interest in the use of AJAX to create widgets and dynamic
user interfaces for mobile phones and other devices. OpenAjax is an
important initiative to encourage standardization and a vibrant AJAX
developer community."
SAP
"AJAX technologies show a lot of promise for SAP users, and have
generated strong interest from the SAP development community at
sdn.sap.com," said Ike Nassi, Sr. VP SAP Research, Americas. "We look
forward to efforts like OpenAJAX providing a consistent and productive
AJAX environment that SAP customers and partners need to obtain maximum
value from these new technologies."
Scalix
"Scalix Web Access is a pioneering Ajax application for web-mail,
providing full Outlook functionality in a high-performance web client.
As such applications mature, it's increasingly important that vendors
coordinate their library development and interoperability, and provide
smooth integration with leading development tools. Scalix is eager to
contribute and coordinate with our partners in the OpenAjax
collaboration."
Software AG
"Ajax shows tremendous promise for the enterprise because of its role
in enabling business technology users to become more productive by
interacting with a Web browser in new ways," said Dr. Peter Kürpick,
Member of the Board, Software AG. "Our participation in the Open Ajax
initiative is a clear statement to the developer community that Ajax
has become a relevant and open technology for business solutions. We
expect to see its adoption rise dramatically over the coming months."
TIBCO
"We look forward to helping the OpenAJAX community accelerate
interoperability by making AJAX libraries and tools more compatible,"
said Kevin Hakman, director, Product Marketing for TIBCO General
Interface. "For five years we've matured our AJAX rich Internet
application framework in enterprise customer deployments. Our expertise
gained from providing the award-winning visual tools found in TIBCO
General Interface Builder should prove valuable for the broad developer
community. This is especially true as visual WYSIWYG AJAX tools become
the logical next step for the Eclipse AJAX Toolkit Framework (ATF)."
XML11
"As a university member of the OpenAJAX initiative we focus on
innovative new ideas and technologies to contribute to the AJAX
movement. With our code migration framework called XML11 we pursue the
'Write Java Once, Run AJAX Everywhere' paradigm that shields developers
from the intrinsic difficulties of writing AJAX applications." Arno
Puder, Assistant Professor, San Francisco State University
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