The document discusses the potential of Silverlight as a replacement for Flash within enterprise applications, comparing their architectures, features, and developer environments. It highlights case studies in healthcare and solar industries, illustrating how Silverlight's capabilities lead to cost reductions and improved user experiences. Additionally, the document presents key learnings and best practices for developing Silverlight applications.

1. Is Silverlight Ready to Replace Flash
in the Enterprise?
Wired2Win Webinar Series
• Vineet Arora, CTO
• Sajjad Nasir, Senior Technical
Architect
WinWire Technologies
© 2010 WinWire Technologies

2. Agenda
● Quick Background and Evolution
● Silverlight Architecture and Features
● Gartner Report on AJAX and RIA (excerpts)
● Rich Internet Applications (RIA) in Business Scenarios
– Healthcare Insurance Case Study
– Clean Technology (Solar) Case Study
● Key Learnings and Best Practices for Silverlight
Applications
© 2010 WinWire Technologies

3. Background and Evolution
Platform
Centric
Early phase
majority
Early phase
• Unified client
and server
adopter centric RIA
Nascent phase
• Enterprises
make strategic • Single RIA
phase commitments to vendor
Embryonic • AJAX – 100+
RIA
• Backbase, GI, open source
phase Lazlo systems, toolkits • Server slide
• Desktop.com Macromedia • Adobe Flex extensions to
• Few products RIA
• Tech
Demonstrations
only
1998 to 2002 2002 to 2004 2004 to 2008 2009 to 2012 Next?
© 2010 WinWire Technologies

4. Silverlight Architecture & Features
● Cross Browser Cross Platform
Technology
● Small size Runtime (Silverlight 4
runtime is < 6 MB of download)
● Provides Audio and Video
Streaming for different form
factors
(e.g. Mobile devices, Desktops,
720p HDTV video modules)
● Compelling graphics capabilities
● Asynchronous Processing
● Supports out of Browser
Experience
Ref: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb404713(VS.95).aspx
© 2010 WinWire Technologies

5. Flash v/s Silverlight: Key Considerations
● Flash has a much bigger Install ● Silverlight 3 adoption has crossed
Installed base currently. About 97 % 40% and Silverlight 4 is nearing
Base
computers have Flash Plug-in* 18% *; Fast growth in adoption
rate (last year was 30%)
Developer ● Flex AIR as the Dev ● Visual Studio as the Dev
Environment environment environment
● Supports only limited languages ● Supports C#, VB.Net, F# etc.. and
Languages for development e.g. Action a high degree of compatibility
Script, JavaScript with Middle Tier layers built
using WCF, LINQ
Rich Media
Support ● Limited SEO (Search Engine
Optimization) ● High SEO, Comparable
● Handles Media content Performance and features
* Source : www.riastats.com
(Audio/Video) very well
© 2010 WinWire Technologies

6. Gartner Rates Silverlight as “Strong
Positive"
Overall Rating : Strong Positive
● “Silverlight has recently gained great visibility, has excellent potential and is experiencing strong
growth…Version 4 includes many features for media use such as webcam support, microphone
support, offline DRM and live streaming (including a way to stream to iPhones). Version 4 also
includes more out-of-browser support…all this still in a 5MB download.”
● “Silverlight … features targeted at enterprise line-of-business (LOB) uses such as printing, rich
text (including right-to-left display for those kinds of languages), ... the ability to compile once
and deploy on Silverlight 4 and .NET 4. This will open the door for many uses within
enterprises.”
● “Silverlight continues its march toward providing more and more of the functionality of .NET, full
WPF and Windows. But the difference between Silverlight and WPF is continuing to shrink.
Silverlight 4 even supports multitouch, as well as more-direct hardware access.”
Source: Gartner Report on AJAX and RIA Technologies :
http://www.gartner.com/technology/media-products/reprints/microsoft/vol13/article4/article4.html
© 2010 WinWire Technologies

7. RIA - HEALTHCARE INSURANCE CASE
STUDY
© 2010 WinWire Technologies

8. Business Background and Challenges
Background Challenges
• Healthcare Insurance • Questionnaire form needs to be dynamic and
Provider, publicly traded, update the questions based on previous
based in US East coast answers
• Wanted to automate the • e.g. a “Yes” answer to question “ Do you
process of creating a case smoke regularly” should prompt the
file for any life insurance examiner to ask more questions, some
applicant using an electronic question may result in Supplementary Forms,
questionnaire and so on
• Available as a web • High text content visible on screen
application • Use of Rich UI with a tree control, Progress bar,
Nested Controls etc.
• Security requirements and architecture
considerations for internal governance needs
© 2010 WinWire Technologies

9. Technology Solution
Use a Silverlight based UI
• Asp.Net + AJAX application to get a more responsive and rich UI
Create meta data based controls in Silverlight
• that provide the display of questionnaire and allow for nesting of questions and other
requirements (e.g. adding Supplementary forms etc.)
Text graphics and Silverlight perform well
• Silverlight handles graphics especially Text Graphics quite well and is able to meet the
Performance requirements
Use Data Binding
• to write much cleaner code and utilize Hierarchical Template to display the TreeView etc.
Silverlight allows one to invoke WCF Services
• and use the Security mechanism provided by WCF
• To reduce attack Surface provide a wrapper service over WCF Service and host in the
same ASP.Net site as that hosting the Silverlight control
© 2010 WinWire Technologies

10. Screenshot
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11. Results
● Product helped cut costs by 50% on underwriting a case
● Customer was able to launch product on time, and issued a
press release for the same
Ref: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Hooper-Holmes-Introduces-bw-3187643785.html?x=0&.v=1
© 2010 WinWire Technologies

12. RIA – SOLAR INDUSTRY CASE STUDY
© 2010 WinWire Technologies

13. Background and Challenges
Background Challenges
• Company is a specialist in • The amount of data generated by the
efficient Voltage Booster Instrumentation is huge. How to
devices and Solar effectively do the data transfer over
Installations the wire and use it in the display?
• Wants to allow customers to • How do we visually represent the
be able to monitor their different metrics in an efficient way
Installation for the (limitation with all out of box charting
Energy/Power produced controls)
• Performance considerations while
designing the display of chart
displaying 3 months or more of data
© 2010 WinWire Technologies

14. Solution overview
● Use a Silverlight based UI rather an Asp.Net + AJAX
application to get a more responsive and rich UI
● Aggregate data at the backend and Use Custom
Serialization in Silverlight to reduce the size of the
data flowing on the wire
● Custom design a Chart control that is able to scale
beyond 10,000 points on the display and allows one
to scale seamlessly for different time range using a
stretch slider functionality
© 2010 WinWire Technologies

15. Data Visualization and Analytics
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16. Data Visualization and Analytics contd…
© 2010 WinWire Technologies

17. Results
● A rich Interactive UI completes the Business proposition of the
Device vendor (Hardware + Software)
● Monitoring Application provides enhanced visibility into
system operation to help with maintenance and long term
system performance
Ref: http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2009/09/eiq-energy-
launches-parallel-solar-technology
© 2010 WinWire Technologies

18. Key learning - Best Practices
Always use Expression Blend to design
the UI
UI Design Evaluate using PRISM for the UI Design
Use ScaleTransform to (http://compositewpf.codeplex.com)
provide Zoom In-Out
features
Accessibility Develop
Use Layered Architecture
with Wrapper Service -
Performance Deploy enhances security by
reducing the attack
Enhance Performance by surface and makes the
following specific tips and Silverlight App easy to
tricks – look out for blog maintain
posting after this session
© 2010 WinWire Technologies