June 07, 2004

Some random thoughts on Flash Communication Server

Lately I've been doing some thinking on the support and community that FCS has at the moment. I don't really have my thoughts in any special order here so I'll just write them out as they come to me, hopefully some of you out there also have some thoughts on the same thing.

To start, I've noticed an increasing amount of interest in FCS yet at the same time a dwindling amount of participation? or interest in actually building FCS apps. One blogger mentioned that due to the extremely high cost of FCS, it's not tuned to the average Joe who just wants to get some live apps up on his/her site. I misunderstood the original post that maybe FCS was too difficult for beginners or people who are new to AS, and that it wouldn't be easy for these folks to get into these types of apps, but later found out that it was pricing that was the problem. Though I have never really sat down and compared pricing vs license issues / availability and ease of use I don't really consider FCS too overly priced but wish that the licensing was a bit different. The amount of connections is reasonable if you don't use vid too much, but if you are just trying to stream out vid or get a video conference going with a bunch of people, that's a different story. Anyways, to not get too off topic on this particular issue, I'm wondering what would cause a decrease in apps being put out. I have to say that I almost never stop messing with something in FCS every single day and can't imagine going back to MSN for daily in-house communication or corroboration with clients. Not only that, there are just so many "neat" things that you can do with FCS, and people generally are interested in that aspect (live data, vid/aud). It's just plain fun. So where's the bottleneck? Well for Japan (which is where most of my attention is), it's a major lack of information, books and material to study off of (in the local language of course). Since the components aren't translated over to Japanese, neither are the documents, which really really sucks to be honest. It makes me wish I was part of the FCS team here in Japan so I could whip some stuff out to boost the community up a bit. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be a priority here (though I really have no idea of what is a priority for MM Japan...) that's just the impression I and a lot of others have. How unfortunate, there are so many possibilities if only there wasn't such a large language barrier.

On another note, it's great to see an update come out for FCS, but what's with the continuous delay of v2? Is it a delay or will we never see it? There are more than a few people who are fuming that MM is keeping all the cool functionality for themselves (see: screensharing) so they can get their foot firmly planted in their own market before any of the developers who work with FCS can. I'm not sure if that is the true story, but again that is the impression that comes across I think. Of course MM did give it a shot in ver 1.5 to get screen sharing out, it just didn't work out. I'm sure we'll see it in v2 but... when is v2 coming out? I wish there was more info on the future of FCS, a roadmap or plan of what MM will do with it in the near and far future. Though because of Breeze I'm sure FCS itself isn't going to go anywhere... but what will it morph into? These are issues that I think every FCS developer is thinking about right now as we continue to invest more and more time and energy into it. What can we plan for, and should we continue to invest time and energy into FCS? Will it still be a "sellable" option to clients? How will pricing work in the future? As we can see with Flex, MM is trying harder to concentrate on it's "Enterprise" image, will FCS go up in price like Flex did and scare away the rest of the low budget companies? Will it be out of reach, or will we have better options? I think these are all important points for all FCS dev guys and gals out there.

So what can we do? What is possible in the hands of anybody but MM (as they seem to be busy with other projects)? Maybe I should ask, what is it that we would want to do? Why are there so many resources and new tutorials for flash, yet so few for FCS? Is it a feeling of movement in Flash that drives people to get out more resources? Do people have more trust in the fact that Flash will be around for time to come so they feel it's worth writing or teaching about? Is FCS missing that? Is it a limitation of what FCS can do? I have a feeling if MM drummed up more support and technotes or articles on FCS, the community would follow that lead in some way. Do we have to rely on the mothership to know where to go? Does MM feel this is a bit of a burden? "how come we always have to lead the pack? pick things up where they were left off and run with it" kind of idea? "you can lead a horse to water but...." or do they use it to control the implementation of certain apps and technology.

Those are a lot of thoughts for one post I think, and I have more, but thinking now that I should organize them a bit. I most certainly don't want to just lay questions out there, but also be able to provide some answers if possible.

Posted by Graeme at June 7, 2004 02:04 PM
　



Comments

it's all about the cost of the license..

for example.. let's say I'm building a web site for a church and offer them two options:
1- using FCS I can broadcast live audio of their services every Sunday morning for up to 100 people. Cost: $99/per month hosting from http://Influxis.com
2- They can use a freely available application to convert parts of the sermon to MP3 files. People won't get a live feed but they will be able to listen to sermons and other stuff.

It simply isn't worth $1200 per year to have a live audio feed for 100 people.. they'll take the free route every time.

Setting up their own FCS really isn't an option for several reasons:
1- most (if not all) hosting companies won't let you install FCS on a "virtual" server. So it will need to be hosted on a co-located server.
2- the license is expensive..
3- it's more hassle to manage and secure the server (let the pros at MediaTemple or Influxis handle it..)

Posted by: mike ldya at June 8, 2004 01:04 AM

I worked on a implemenation of elearning solution on FCS. And the conclusion is the same, the maintainance cost does not justify the cost, the bussiness model just don't work.

In short, FCS got the following problem:
1) It is point-to-point apps anyway. Quite a lot of $$ is spent on the network brandwidth (thus, putting the server at data center, for instance)
2) The license is expensive (don't need to argue with that)
3) You just can't trust MM. Not only v2 of FCS can't be see ... even so, I bet your whole application need to be rewroten. Don't you see breeze live? Much of its features are the features we wanted/tried and developed. And there are some features we just can't do on 1.x FCS. MM releases a platform (FCS), and then ask you to develop application on it (and hopefully making some money). But after a few months, they release another an even better one. How could you compete with it? (Don't forget you need to buy the license from them...)

FCS fun... I enjoyed the every moment when I worked with it. But it is difficult to turn into business.

Posted by: Simon at June 8, 2004 02:39 AM

I think FCS has a big feature; it's integrated features are inside the Flash 6 & 7 player, so they aren't going anywhere.

The product itself has matured a lot internally, I'm sure since Macromedia themselves has been using their own product which means when they do release an update, it'll defintely be a lot tighter, I'm sure... from an admin perspective, which affects me indirectly, but affects me just the same.

My only problem with FCS is deployment. Macromedia responded very positively when we all bitched that we wanted a development version to learn with. Using the local development edition works great; even the "play" account at MediaTemple compliments that well.

...however, actually deploying any of your apps is a joke. Unless your actually going to make money from the apps you deploy, your paying for the hosting straight out of your pocket. The $50 I pay a month for my 2 websites (one hosting, one filespace) is for fun, giving back to the community, and advertising my skills when I need to. So, it in the end pays for itself as long as I make $600 worth of contract work a year, which doesn't all come from my website anyway.

Paying even just $75 for 50 people to play a game I make is just for fun is unrealistic in an expense. The issue is going back to XMLSocket, in which you can get hosting for as low as $4 bucks a month, is fuggin lame once you've used Flashcom; you never want to go back even for just the Remote Shared Object alone. It's sad really; if I won the lottery, a big chunk would go to Flashcom hosting for fun stuff. We can't all be Jobe Makar! (http://www.electrotank.com/)

Posted by: JesterXL at June 8, 2004 04:16 AM

Mike, I totally agree with you on that one. There just isn't the ROI on an app like that unless of course you got money to burn ;) It's most certainly a cool idea though, wouldn't you be able to find somebody who can cut you a deal though? Make the account only available on Sunday for so many hours for so many connections.. not sure how feasible that is though.. As for managing your own server, I don't think it's as bad as you think especially if all you are running on it is FCS. Without having to install all kinds of extra software, run a DB and web service, it should be simple to manage and secure it (theoretically), especially now that FCS has settled down and doesn't crash or overload the system.

Simon, yeah.. no kidding. I agree that Breeze really cut off a lot of dev guys out there trying to build their own stuff, but I also think that there is a niche for custom apps that don't need everything that FCS has, or at the very least, need to look much different. As for trusting them.. it's a dog eat dog world out there, it's the guy who stays on top that wins (and we all know that MM isn't in it for the popularity contest among the dev people ;) 'tis the money that makes the business world go 'round).

Jesse, yup no doubt about that. The integration with the flash player is key here.

I agree, it has matured quite a bit, but most definitely has a long way to go. I think the fact that they are using it with Breeze will in the end help us out because they will see all the bugs and quirks that FCS has themselves. They'll have to fix them out of necessity then.

But I guess what it really all boils down to is pricing and deployment. Whether you are going to get the ROI on it or not. That's a tough one, it really depends on the apps you are trying to get out I suppose. We are just about to finish up a rather large request for about 12 multilanguage conference/e-learning style apps. I think if the marketing is done well, it'll really kick off, but I can't imagine the bandwidth they are going to chew through if it becomes a bit too popular. In that case, this is when FCS's major drawback comes into place: it only allows 10mbps for a 5000 dollar license..

Posted by: Graeme at June 8, 2004 11:52 AM