Will Adobe do a better job of marketing ColdFusion? Can they do any worse?

David Fekke has a good analysis of the recent ComputerWorld article, dismantling it line-by-line. But the last paragraph is the most telling.

"Op-Ed pieces like this are typical of pubs like Computerworld and Wired nowadays. I guess it is to be considered when you realize that Adobe has completely mishandled the marketing of ColdFusion. One has to ask how Ruby on Rails has garnered such positive press with no advertising budget, and ColdFusion gets an "It is dead" article every three months."

Indeed. Though I'd place more of the blame at Macromedia's feet than at Adobe's. Then again, in both cases ColdFusion seems to be the little red-headed step-child that no one knows quite how to handle.

Macromedia aquired Allaire so that they'd be able to sell a backend to their flagship product Dreamweaver. Later on they switched horses and dedicated the majority of their resources towards developing and promoting Flash. Adobe, in turn aquired Macromedia to get their hands on Flash, attempting, together with Acrobat and the PDF format, to get a lock on the internet's rich media technologies.

Much has been made of the fact that ColdFusion is going to be promoted as the preeminent backend platform for developing Flash and Flex applications... but I'm not sure I'm buying it. Adobe is pretty much the only remaining software giant that managed not to get steamrollered by Microsoft, and that didn't happen by accident.

ColdFusion might be the preferred backend, but don't think for a second that Adobe is not going to provide extensive Flash/Flex support for .NET, Java, PHP, Ruby, and Python. Because if Adobe is going to take over the RIA space, they can't afford not to do so. They need those people to adopt their tools, and the ColdFusion developer base simply isn't large enough.

Speaking of support, one of ColdFusion's best marketing moments could have came from fact that MySpace, one of the internet's largest and highest profile sites, ran on ColdFusion. Macromedia should have trumpeted this from the ramparts to any and all that would listen... and they did not.

They could have provided a dedicated team of engineers to make sure that MySpace was their "flagship" store, and that MySpace purred along running on ColdFusion. They didn't, and as such, it's not.

And unless that changes under Adobe's stewardship, I strongly suspect that Scorpio is going to be ColdFusion's last major release.

Why? Because Adobe has a habit of abandoning technologies that fail to meet their definitions of success. How much have your heard about Adobe Content Server recently? Adobe Graphics Server?

It's been superseded by Dreamweaver, of course, but how much did one hear about Adobe GoLive once it failed to unseat Dreamweaver in the marketplace? How much support did it get? How much development effort?

Enough said.

Ben Forta's back flush from his Scorpio tour, but as David indicates, he was simply out preaching to the choir.

When what we really need is to figure out how to get more people into the church.

Comments

[Adam]

If I recall correctly, MySpace runs BlueDragon, not native CF. That might be why Macromedia wasn't out trumpeting the triumph of CF.

[Michael Long]

MySpace started out as a pure CF shop, moved to Blue Dragon on .NET, and used that as a springboard to move pretty much entirely to .NET itself.

[Ed]

Good points. Adobe have the marketing budget but so far seem unsure where to position CF within their product range, leaving publicity to Tim Buntel. Where are the CEO statements - should we expect these for the CF8 live launch? At least Adobe's PR campaigns are better organized and have more clout than those from CF's previous owners. The CF8 beta attracted a reasonable amount of mainstream press, much of it focusing on CF's perceived obsolescence.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/05/29/adobe-coldfusion_1.html

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/05/30/coldfusion-8-brands-with-adobe

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2138586,00.asp

http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3680376

Hopefully Adobe will roll out their major publicity campaign for the CF8 official release: CF needs statements from Chizen or other Adobe board-level execs and exposure on Adobe's home page (at least) in order to be taken seriously as a valuable asset within the Adobe product range.

One of CF's key strengths has always been its ability to interface with many technologies, and speed of development. Adobe should be shifting marketing focus towards IT management who look for faster development times and lower associated staffing overheads along with system stability and low cost of ownership. Offering CF beta and evaluation downloads for free is a good start for building a larger developer base: Adobe need to get CF into comp sci and web development classes to get the next generation of CF developers hooked on it early.

The recent London Scorpio launch event attracted only around 30 people: a small showing for such a key CF release. MM's CF7 event attracted around 100 (albeit likely due to its being held at an upmarket venue). Why so few attendees? Why such a relatively low-key launch in the basement of a down-at-heel facility? Is CF seen by developers as being less relevant now than then? Have experienced CF developers moved to different platforms, and if so, why?