With the recent release of Flex 2 and the provision of the free Flex SDK, low-cost developer tooling and optional use of Flex Data Services for applications that require data synchronisation, collaboration/messaging, etc there are many developers and enterprises that are now considering Flex for the first time - in fact to many Flex is a "new" offering in the RIA marketplace.
From a developer perspective, seeing the potential in a new technology and the possibilities it offers can often be dampened when proposing it's use on a project the first question asked by a project manager, IT director or other developers/architects is "Who else is using this technology?" From an enterprise viewpoint there are always concerns with adopting new technologies, irrespective of the licensing costs (i.e. whether it is "free" or has "enterprise" pricing), with security, stability and the impact on the existing infrastructure top of the list.
The good news here is that whilst Flex 2 is a significant release, there are over 600 enterprise/corporate customers worldwide who have built and deployed strategic applications with Flex 1.0 and 1.5. There are case studies, references and customer examples at Adobe.com, but for UK developers considering Flex 2 for a forthcoming project, it might be useful to know about a couple of the high-profile organisations who have already deployed Flex applications in either the UK or Ireland, so that you can answer that "Who else is using Flex?" question if it comes up...
Halifax Bank of Scotland, the UK's largest mortgage and savings provider, uses Flex on the Intelligent Finance website to provide customers with a comprehensive offset mortgage calculator.
Nationwide, the UK's second largest savings provider, uses Flex to provide an interactive savings and investments navigator application, allowing customers to choose the most appropriate financial products.
O2 Ireland, part of the Telefónica group, has built a mobile phone comparison tool, using Flex, as part of their online shopping experience.
Tussauds Group, Europe's no 1 visitor attraction business, enlisted the help of Monochrome to build a single screen checkout experience for the Alton Towers theme park hotel.
Whilst the above are all public facing consumer applications, there are many more customers who deploy Flex-based line of business applications behind the firewall. One such customer that I can mention here is BSkyB, the satellite broadcaster - they have a number of Flex-based applications, including one that enables editors and producers to build, layout and schedule content that is to be pushed out to Sky's set-top boxes (i.e. the experience you get when you press the red button).
As we start to see some of the Flex 2 applications that are currently in development move into production I'll reference them here. If you're working on Flex 2 project and want to let us know about it drop me a note in the comments or to ashorten at adobe.com.
