Interest in the whole area is obvious with SAPs working with both Microsoft and Adobe to make their interfaces better. The first part of the news was that SAP and Microsoft will be upgrading Duet, an add in for Microsoft Office that gives Office users a hook into SAPs back end system.
Adobe's Flex technology looks likely to be providing a "Flex front end" for many of SAPs applications, which is seen by some, like James Governor, an industry analyst with RedMonk, who has stated that“Anything that improves SAP’s interfaces, which are hideous and hard to use, is a good thing,”.
Enterprise companies like SAP have a lot of power at their disposal, but as computing as advanced, and user experience expectations have risen (something RIAs are helping with) all BI companies are finding that their customers demand better, more usable interfaces.
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BEA is already using Flex as their front end, which is good for Flex but perhaps the real good thing is that this move is causing many companies to create better UI front ends.
For the most part RIAs ignore the back end and are just about building better interfaces. With all of the time, energy and money that has gone into creating powerful backends, the investment on the User Interface side of things has dropped off. But now, this case of the consumer side (who use the UI) and the enterprise side (who are more concerned with the back end) coming together for mutual benefit must be good news for all.
