What is Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR)?

When you move from desktop application development to web application development, you gain a lot in terms of distribution, working across operating systems, and ease of updating applications. But you lose things, such as, access to the local file system, drag and drop features, the ability to notify the user if something changes.

So, Adobe thought: How could it get those desktop features to Web apps?

AIR is basically about enabling web apps so that they have the “power” of the desktop application. In today’s IT enabled world, the trend is toward hosted applications, software as a service, that are built with web technologies. AIR helps your web apps to look beyond the boundary of a browser.

Adobe is just following its suite, as it has solved the cross-printer problem with Postscript, has solved the cross- word-processing-program problem with Portable Document Format (PDF), and has solved the problem of multimedia and video incompatibility across the Web with Flash. So, the obvious next frontier is solving the problem of cross-operating-system application runtime. In some ways, it's the toughest of all the problems that Adobe has cracked so far.

As people are relying more and more on web technologies for getting information, doing business transactions, expressing themselves creatively. The digital revolution that's happening now is with web technologies. So, by all means, for Adobe, this problem is worth pondering on.

Web apps have a lot of benefits from an IT perspective. They are easier to monitor because you just update them on the server and everyone gets the updated version. We don't have to worry about having a particular configuration on the desktop. You can have Mac, Windows, Linux, whatever you like, and your web applications will work. Moreover, web apps are easier to develop. You can have web developers creating these applications in conjunction with traditional IT architecture on the server side.

But, while web developers gained a lot when they went to the Web, they also lost the ability to access “personal” or “confidential” information while they are on the road. For example, companies have directories for everyone who works there. You can usually look up information on those directories while you are inside the organization’s firewall, but while you are traveling, either you don't have a network connection or you have to connect through a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to get that information. Now, this problem could be solved using AIR. AIR helps you to “integrate” your web apps with your mobile devices, and also gives your web apps the power of traditional desktop apps.

Hats off to Adobe!! Good work.