ColdFusion survived the turn of a millenium, the destruction of the .com era, the changing of underlying technologies from a wholly owned C-based technology to living on JAVA in a complex and ever changing world, the changing of product managers several times (including the change to me being the product manager), 2 acquisitions, and 8 versions (with the 9th version already announced by Kevin Lynch, the SVP of the Platform BU and Chief Software Architect of Adobe)... but CFDJ has keenly determined... that ColdFusion cannot survive one thing... Tim Buntel... moving to the FlexBuilder team.
To be clear, I have more respect for Tim Buntel than you will ever know. He has done tremendous things for ColdFusion. He carried the CF torch for a very long time, through very tough times. He was involved in the product decisions for CF8, but certainly did not run the show. His responsibilities as Product Marketing Manager left him mostly concentrated on things dealing with... well... Marketing.
Tim's replacement in the Marketing role is Kristen Webb Schofield. Kristen has been working on the ColdFusion team since 2000, back to the Allaire days. She has been to all the conferences, understands the ColdFusion user and community as well as anyone, is hard working, and is as sharp as they come. We are all very fortunate to have Kristen working on ColdFusion.
So... I came on almost 2 years ago in the Product Management role and Kristen has moved up to replace Tim in the Product Marketing role...
Is CFDJ saying that the two of us... can't possibly replace the one Tim Buntel? and therefore Adobe must be killing CF?
Tim is still involved with the CF community (he's heading to Europe over the next few week to promote CF) and he's still at Adobe. In fact, rather than seeing Tim in one Marketing meeting a week and the occassional chat by the water cooler... he is a fellow Product Manager, and we are on the same Product Management team! Which means we meet several times a week, and are able to exchange more product ideas than ever before.
The climate of "everything must be JAVA or .NET" is gone... it is clear that CF has a future, and a team focusing on that future. We are firing on all cylinders. The sales phones are absolutely ringing off the hook (ask Jason Graves our Sales Account Manager some time). CF is in the best position it has been in years...
In fact, we're expanding the CF team, looking for sales members and evangelists.
I don't get it... spite? sensational journalism? lack of understanding of the real situation? This just seems to validate the decision to no longer fund SYS-CON. The decision was made because the content and services were less relevant and compelling, but their lack of professionalism is justification in itself.
I just don't get it... I'd love to here your comments.
Jason
