According to Jnan Dash, Chief Strategy Officer of Curl, 2008 will see increased adoption of Web 2.0 in the enterprise. "But the door for this entry will be RIAs (Rich Internet Applications)," Dash notes, "rather than mash-ups or blogs or wikis."

An industry veteran who spent ten years at Oracle Corporation and was the Group Vice President, Systems Architecture and Technology till 2002, Dash adds: "Big players like Microsoft (Silverlight) and Adobe (AIR - Adobe Integrated Runtime) have joined the race for RIA. But they lack the critical dimensions of scalability, performance, and security, very important for large enterprises."

Just having blogs, wikis, tags, mash-ups, and social software does not yield obvious benefits to the business, according to Dash. 

"The ROI piece is unclear," he says, adding:

"Many times, they are 'solutions looking for problems.' The US market is more hype-driven and technologies are adopted because they seem cool. This is where one area comes as an obvious entry point for Web 2.0, called RIAs (Rich Internet Applications).

RIAs are all about enhanced user experience. Complex interactive visualization, minimizing clicks to complete a multi-step transaction, making information available with mouse-over, are some examples of improving aesthetics and user experience. This is an obvious area to move existing client-server applications to the 'Web as the new platform' (a promise of Web 2.0)."

He joins a faculty of industry thought leaders and practitioners that includes:

• The discoverer of JSON - Douglas Crockford
• The creator of jQuery - John Resig
• The father of the OpenAjax Alliance - David Boloker
• Engineering manager of the YUI Team at Yahoo! - Eric Miraglia
• Senior Evangelist, Amazon - Jeff Barr
• Architect at eBay - Michael Galpin
• Director, User Interface Engineering at Netflix - BillScott
• VP of Engineering at TripIt.com - Andy Denmark 
• Chairman & CEO of WaveMaker - Chris Keene
• CTO of Pathfinder Development - Dietrich Kappe
• Sun's AJAX Architect - Greg Murray
• Technology Evangelist for Web Services and Web 2.0 Apps at Sun - Arun Gupta
• Senior Engineer and Designer, Yahoo!  - Nate Koechley
• President and senior trainer at Object Training Group - James Harmon
• Lead Developer of the Qcodo Development Framework for PHP - Michael Ho
• VP of Business Development at CommuniGate Systems - Jon Doyle
• Sr. Developer at the creative agency Magnani Caruso Dutton - Mike Girouard
• Lead Developer for the Oracle Fusion Middleware Integration Platform - Rakesh Saha
• UI Architect at Edream Solutions - Sue Googe
• System Operations Manager at EngineYard - Yehuda Katz
• Senior Technology Evangelist at Microsoft - Laurence Moroney
• Co-Founder & COO of Concept Solutions - John Krahulec
• Co-Founder & COO of Finicity - Nicholas Thomas
• Principal Consultant, Experience Design at Molecular - Evan Gerber
• Principal Engineer, VeriSign - Karthik Shyamsunder
• Chief dragon-wrangler for Komodo - Shane Caraveo
•  Principal Software Developer, Red Hat - Thomas Heute
• Operations Manager of the OpenAjaxAlliance - John Ferraiola
• Web Theorist, IBM - Andrew Donoho
• Tech Lead of the Spring Faces project  - Jeremy Grelle
• Senior Consultant at SpringSource - Rossen Stoyanchev 
   

AJAXWorld RIA Conference & Expo 2008 West
The days when AJAX is the only game in town are over, and the 6th International AJAXWorld RIA Conference & Expo in San Jose, CA, on October 20-22, 2008 is your chance to come and see it and hear it for yourself.

Because it's easy to misjudge priorities and invest in the wrong technology, AJAXWorld will help you invest in the right one for your particular business. It will help you find the optimal balance between business needs, technology potential, and enhanced user experience. AJAXWorld Conference & Expo 2008 West is where you can find what you're going to need for business survival and Web success in 2008, 2009 and beyond.

AJAXWorld's 80+ technical sessions, Keynotes, Power Panels and General Session Demos will help you determine which Rich Internet Technology will provide the most meaningful impact in your business, organization or service. The conference program aims to inform and inspire you toward the detailed implementation plan that you're going to need in the next 12 months in your own initiative whether that's SaaS, financial services, healthcare, enterprise portals, ISV applications, or whatever.

The Expo floor additionally will allow you to follow up on the premier solutions already available and to choose which best suits your needs.

Click here to Attend and Save $400 on Golden Pass (Expires May 30th, 2008)
Click here to Sponsor and/or Exhibit
Click here to submit a Speaking Proposal