Last week, Sun's CEO Jonathan Schwartz declared on his blog that Sun's JavaFX is "the fastest growing RIA platform on the market", based on Sun announcing that it had shipped its 100 millionth JavaFX runtime. While that sounds like a big number that everyone should be impressed by, we're not. In fact, it only makes Sun look like they have no idea what is going on in the industry.

Anyone who has read my blog long enough knows I question numbers from all vendors and I hate proclamations based on marketing fluff. Sun is new to the RIA market yet apparently, has already declared themselves the winner, even though no JavaFX based video apps are being used in any wide scale adoption. Not a single one.

I have to wonder how the CEO of Sun is allowed to make such bold, inaccurate statements without his blog posts first being reviewed by someone at Sun who is in better touch with reality. Jonathan goes on to say in his post that, "The Java platform continues to provide the world's most complete open source platform for a rich internet." Is he serious? JavaFX does not even support H.264. How can you talk about having the world's most complete open source platform when your own platform does not support H.264 for video applications? Saying you want to support it in the future does not count.

Not to mention that because JavaFX supports different video codecs on different platforms, it makes it impossible to "write once, run everywhere", which as a result, dilutes one of Sun's key marketing messages. In addition, since On2's Flix software application is the only tool that can encode video for JavaFX today, it will be difficult for a large number of designers and developers to create video content for the Sun platform.

JavaFX has a limited set of APIs and to date, Sun considered only the basic scenarios, not all of the complex and difficult scenarios that customers may encounter. As a result, developers may run into some difficulty when trying to build complex RIAs with early versions of JavaFX. Case in point, look at all of the comments on Jonathan's post from Java developers and designers complaining about the lack of features and tools. One commenter even asks how Sun can call this the world's most complete open source platform when as he says, "you haven't even released it for the open source OSes. Not even your own Solaris."

Adding to the problem is also the questionable designer-developer collaboration story.  Looking at an early video of the Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator plug-ins (formerly referred to as Project Nile), it appears that support for "round tripping" may be limited or non-extant.  While it is clear that designers will be able to export graphic elements to be used in NetBeans (or Eclipse), it is unclear how designers will be able to take projects developed in NetBeans and customize the UI, add skinning, etc.  Since NetBeans has no visual designer, making simple changes to design elements may be tedious for developers. 

Jonathan also says in his post that, "And most importantly – JavaFX allows content owners to bypass potentially hostile browsers, to install applications directly on user desktops and phones." I don't know what he means by "hostile browsers", but I have a suggestion for the definition. Trying viewing Sun's own javafx.com website using Safari or Firefox on the Mac. The browsers constantly force quit or I'm given slow script error messages from Sun's SimpleVideoPlayer prompting my broswer to ask me if I want to stop the script. That's my definition of a product that makes my browser hostile. When I do get lucky and the javafx.com site works, the demos I get look horrible. The video is choppy, completely pixelated and takes more than twenty seconds to even load.

Getting back to the 100M download number that Sun says is such a milestone, how about Sun explaining where that number comes from? What about the bundling of JavaFX via the Java Updater? Is Sun trying to say that of the 100M downloads, each person who initiated the download was specifically trying to get the JavaFX runtime? As one comment on Jonathan's post says, "what did you guys count as JavaFX downloads, are
these downloads that were initiated by an application requiring JavaFX,
downloads counting visits to the JavaFX main site, or does it also
include any upgrades in existing Java runtimes?" That's a great question and one we should not have to be asking. Did Sun think no one was going to ask? They started this by giving out the number, using that number as the reason for their success but then held back by giving out any details. What are they hiding? Do the numbers not look as good once we find out where the 100M comes from? You can't put out numbers like that, declaring a success and expect us to just take it at face value.

Now if Jonathan's post was simply we've had 100M downloads and we're building out this platform to compete, no problem. Great, welcome to the party. But to call out the other RIA competitors by name and mention them in the same vein as JavaFX, as if they are equal, is flat out asking to challenged. Jonathan's says in his post, "what you can do with Flash is comparable to Silverlight, and again comparable to JavaFX." Please, stop the marketing spin. Why does the entire post feel like Sun is trying to talk to us as if we are all dumb and don't know what is really taking place in the market.

Anyone who has read my blog long enough knows I hit back hard at any vendor who wants to lead with marketing fluff and gives out numbers backed up by no details. It's bad for the industry and bad for the vendor doing it. Nothing good comes from this practice. This is not personal to Sun or to Jonathan. But the simple fact that Sun acknowledges that they only entered the market in December, yet already declare themselves the "fastest growing" and "world's most complete open source platform" in only three months time is really something they should know better than to try and convince us of.

To Sun I say welcome to the space. Happy to see another competitor in the RIA arena but you need to convince us of your success based on the adoption of JavaFX based applications, functionality of the JavaFX platform and let content owners and designers dictate what they deem to be a successful offering in the market. Anything outside of that is just marketing fluff.

Note: It should be mentioned that I contacted Sun before this post to see if they wanted to provide me with any more details on Jonathan's post or setup a time for me to speak with him directly. They were very responsive but were out of the country at the Mobile World Congress show and said they usually don't comment on what Jonathan posts in his blog. But if Jonathan or Sun wants to reply to this post, I will publish any official response from them exactly as I am sent it.

Over the past few weeks I have been hearing rumors that ESPN360.com was working on migrating their video over to the Move Networks broadcast platform. In this case, the rumors were true and on Tuesday afternoon, ESPN360.com migrated all of the broadcast production services formerly being provided by The FeedRoom in NYC over to Move's broadcast operations center based in Utah. ESPN360.com is now using Move's broadcast publishing system for their video workflow. As some of the comments correctly pointed out, ESPN360.com has already been using Move's player technology since late 07'. visitors to ESPN360.com were asked to install the Move Networks plugin and all of the videos I've watched on the site are now using Move's technology.

As expected, the video quality looks great and the content is being delivered via HTTP, so I am curious if some of the technical support questions that users have when trying to get video from streaming media protocols have now been resolved.

Now if only ESPN would stop their horrible business practice of licensing ESPN360.com to ISPs, they might actually have a decent offering.

Tomorrow at 2pm ET is another StreamingMedia.com webinar that I will be moderating, this time discussing how content owners can leverage the features of the Flash Media Interactive Server. Joining Adobe will be CDNetworks which will be showcasing one of their customers that have a video-based social network platform and have implemented a Flash Media Server 3.5 solution on their network.

We'll also be doing a extensive Q&A session with viewers and all those who attend are entered to win a free TOMTOM GPS unit. You can sign up for the free webinar here.

In the last few weeks, startup Seawell Networks has launched their website which gives a few more details on the company. Based in Toronto, Seawell Networks is looking to help enable content delivery networks and content owners scale online video to a larger audience with more functionality. They don't plan to compete with CDNs, but rather help enable them to specifically provide a better viewer experience for the H.264 standard. While they are still staying quiet on exactly what their offering will look like, you can expect them to launch to the market sometime in the second half of this year.

Seawell is not commenting on their funding situation but a quick Google search shows it is clear that they have already raised seed venture capital financing and someone from Toronto based Northwater Capital is listed on their website as being one of Seawell's board of directors.

It seems that no matter who you talk to, or what industry segment they are from, you can't escape the whole online video monetization debate. While it's a topic that is important to talk about, I think many forgot that today, for the vast majority of content owners, online video is a line item cost, not a revenue generator.

While everyone is working to change the economic dynamics of online video from cost to profit, we have to be realistic and truthful about what content owners are going through, especially in today's tough economic climate. I hear a lot of industry vendors talk about how they are looking to "add value" with their offering or how their platform allows for "monetization" of content. In many cases, the value is not clearly spelled out by the vendor or it does not exist. Many times what one vendor or customer sees as adding value, another customer wouldn't. Content owners don't want a bunch of fancy marketing terms used to describe what they are buying. They want simple, straight-forward details on how the product or service is going to help them generate money, lower their costs, or at least allow them to break even with their online video offering.

The other day, one major content owner told me that they have nearly 50,000 hours of video archives they have yet to encode and place online as doing so would simply cost them money each month. And while they already have a large volume of traffic to their site, the simple cost to encode, store, manage and deliver all of that content won't generate them any revenue this year. This highlights the major problem that content owners are facing, even a top-tier major content owner such as this one.

Aside from a handful of online video offerings from companies like Apple, MLB and others, how many other companies can we point to who are making money today? When asked, even the major broadcasters won't give out any real details on whether they are even covering their costs for their online video offerings. As an industry, if we can't point to dozens of successful case studies published online that show content owners making money, then we have to be even smarter on the projections and expectations we set with content owners and with one another in the industry.

Many are working and working hard to solve this problem. Online video advertising is only just beginning, new consumer devices are starting to come to market and the quality of video is getting better each year. Three to four years from now this will look like an entirely different industry, but it's going to take a lot of work to get there. Some content owners won't make it and many are going to struggle for some time to come. While we are seeing progress with many different facets of online video, we need to keep the industry grounded and realistic and remember that for nearly all content owners, online video is still a cost center.

UPDATED: I've now heard back from Move Networks and can confirm that CEO John Edwards is still the CEO of the company. In addition, John has now been named executive chairman of the board of directors. Move says 30% of the company has been laid off and they "are making the necessary adjustments and planning appropriately to get to profitability more quickly."

It's always unfortunate for any company to have to do layoffs and for employees to lose their jobs, but if the layoffs help Move get to profitability faster, it needs to be done. I've also been told, but not by Move, that these layoffs were planned back in November and that folks were told their last day would be this week. If that is the case, it was a nice way for Move to do it, giving people three months notice.

While Move won't say how much revenue they did last year, I have heard from people who would know that Move billed roughly $40M in total 2008 revenue. I don't know how much cash they are burning through but with the increased business Move has been signing up and the financial savings they will see from the layoffs, I think Move could get to profitability in the next 18 months if not sooner.

Move Networks made some major layoffs in the past day or two and rumors are circulating that CEO John Edwards has also been let go. While I can't confirm or deny if Move has changed their CEO, I'm hoping it's not true, I can confirm that layoffs have happened. I reached various Move employees in the past few hours who told me they could not comment on what is taking place as they no longer work for the company.

Some Move Networks employees e-mails are now bouncing and when you call Move's HQ and use their automated phone system, John Edwards and other employees names are no longer found. Move did say they will contact me shortly to give me the details, and I will update this post when I know more.

Added 4:21pm – When reached by phone Steamboat Ventures declined to comment on any of the changes today at Move Networks and passed me off to an outside PR agency.

Added 4:29pm – I've now heard from multiple former Move employees who have been let go and it appears the layoffs have come from locations all over North America and not just from Move's headquarters as some were speculating.

StreamingMedia.com has a series of three upcoming webinars that I will be moderating over the next few weeks. Kicking off tomorrow at 2pm ET is Limelight Networks and Gomez presenting on how content owners can "Maximize Your CDN investment". Learn why real-world testing is the best measure of a CDN's performance, tips for improving the performance of your infrastructure, metrics for measuring effectiveness from the user's perspective and how a CDN partner can lower your infrastructure costs. The webinar is free and those who attend are entered to win a free TOMTOM GPS unit.

Next week, CDNetworks and Adobe are presenting on "How to Optimize Your Video Streaming Projects with Flash Media Interactive Server 3.5"

And in two weeks, on February 26th, Rhozet will be presenting on "Transcoding 101". Learn about video and audio formats, why and when format conversion (transcoding) is critical, the vocabulary of transcoding, industry-leading transcoding technologies, and how to generate supplemental revenue streams via IPTV, VOD, DVD, web and mobile media.