Investing in ColdFusion

I just got word today that one of our clients has put their order for ColdFusion 8 Enterprise Edition. In light of the turmoil this week over a certain publisher's decision. I wanted to bring some attention to why ColdFusion remains a viable. intelligent and powerful decision for any enterprise. The loss of a magazine should not be sufficiently influential to sway your opinion away from CF!

I recommended this purchase about two weeks ago based on several factors:

• CF8 is a BIG step forward in both performance and functionality over CF7 (which they are currently running)
• Adobe continues to invest heavily in the development of ColdFusion as the backend of choice for rich internet applications
• Our client has several Ajax and Flex applications in production already with several more on the way
• ColdFusion has been a key player in our ability to bring multiple systems together via ODBC. XML. RSS and web services and unify presentation of the data in one application environment.
• CFML has not lost sight of it's primary focus: making difficult things easy to do. The language is powerful and simple to learn and the CF team should be applauded for keeping it that way even while adding new features.
• We can train developers to use ColdFusion effectively through the utilization of frameworks. code reuse. and best practices while simultaneously empowering them to build applications quickly thanks to the simplicity of CFML. I never worry about finding great talent to work on CF applications as we can bring a great Java or .NET programmer up to speed in very little time.
• We can prove that development time for CF applications is significantly less than in other languages for the types of applications we develop.
• The CF8 beta program allowed us time to test existing systems on the new platform earlier than we would have ordinarily. validating their marketing-speak with real world experience. I will not lose much sleep over the day we make the migration to 8.

Why ColdFusion? Because we can deliver great applications faster. Great applications are developed with security. scalability and maintainability in mind. ColdFusion coupled with a solid framework and well-conceived architecture allows us to do just that.

Don't let the death of a magazine change your opinion of a great server platform that is worth every penny of an enterprise license. ColdFusion is the smart choice for developers looking to provide a solid solution in as little time as possible. Besides. if you really need a magazine. take a good look at the Fusion Authority Quarterly Update. It comes out more regularly than that other magazine ever did!