Form and Function

I fell in love with flex when I first started using it back in October of 2005 with the Flex 2.0 alpha. I loved it so much I started a business that used it is as its primary technology and based a big part of the business strategy on the assumption everyone would love it as much as I did and the developer community would grow quickly. Well I was partly right, everyone DID love it, especially the end-users in our target market (BI dashboard consumers.) What I didn't anticipate was that the DEMAND for flex talent would be so high that trying to find a flex developer was next to impossible.

The wrinkle for me as a business owner was that I built a platform that was designed to host Flex dashboards, but it would require flex developers to build client specific content for the platform in the form of flex dashboard applications. For a client to gain any value from our platform they would need content tailored to their unique needs (think of a typical intranet portal.) For our marquee (read Fortune 500) clients we would offer professional services to build their dashboards, but our whole goal was to sell recurring revenue via a SaaS business model, not via professional services. We soon ran into roadblocks in the sales process when we would tell clients that in order to extend, or add dashboards they simply had to just "hire a flex developer.." Well that was pretty much where the sales conversation ended, because we were asking them to find a resource, we ourselves couldn't even find (I ended up hiring good Java, and C++ developers and trained them on Flex myself.) The demand for Flex had far outstripped the supply. I was hearing rates of $250/hr + for Flex engineering work!

What I didn't anticipate, or said more accurately "think-through", is that there would be a lag between the demand generated for Flex and RIA, and the resources to fulfill the demand. Well things are getting slightly better. I see evidence (anecdotal) that the Flex developer community is really starting grow, with community sponsored events like Flex 360 we see a huge groundswell starting to manifest.

I also am starting to see the community filling needs in regards to the flex code base/framework faster than Adobe can with projects like Model Glue, Degrafa, and FlexMDI. Projects like this are really exciting to see, and have huge implications in regards to the efficacy of open source and the implications it has with business strategy when it comes to running a software company.
It seems now that the supply is starting to slowly catch up with the demand, and I realize one of the major accelerators that are filling the supply side of the equation is the open source community. This realization is partly responsible for me taking a serious look at how we can contribute to the effort because it appears to be a true win-win.