At DevCon, in October, it was great to see the passion and commitment of the ColdFusion developer community. Since 2001, Macromedia has made a significant investment in ColdFusion, taking it to a whole new architecture with the MX release, partnering with IBM and Sun to support ColdFusion adoption, and integrating it with Macromedia Flash and Dreamweaver.

We made the investment because we believe it matters. The ColdFusion development community has always been at the cutting edge of Internet development. As we move into 2003, ColdFusion developers are now in a unique position to help lead the development of the next wave of rich Internet applications.

When I speak with the CEOs and CIOs of our major customers, I consistently hear the same themes. They want to deliver Internet applications at a lower cost with faster time-to-market. They want to build on industry standards, and most important, they want the next generation of their Internet and intranet solutions to offer a radically better user experience for their employees, customers, and partners.

In the increasingly competitive global market, delivering great user experiences isn't a nice-to-have or simply a graphic design issue. Effective user experiences have become a business imperative because they are fundamental to how companies create and deliver value in today's economy, both online and off.

Take JetBlue Airways, for example. In December, they were named "Marketer of the Year" by Advertising Age because they led the industry in filling their planes in a very tough market for air travel. Their success is credited in large part to the unique in-flight experience they have created with innovations like TV for every passenger.

Online, the quality of the user experience goes far beyond graphic design or site usability. It is based on how well a site or application gives end users the ability to quickly, easily, and in a meaningful way, accomplish their goals. Creating great online user experiences requires a deep understanding of the end users and brings together everything from user interface design to system architecture and application development. Great experiences are fundamentally the result of building systems from front end to back end so that they truly work for the user.

The experience imperative is critical for companies that want to maximize the impact of their software solutions on the bottom line. Forrester Research found that companies that redesign sites to support user goals can raise online revenues by 30% or more. They went on to estimate that investments in usability could deliver as much as a 245% return. In other words, bad user experiences cost businesses money in lost sales and lost productivity.

All this puts ColdFusion developers in a sweet spot. By taking advantage of the tremendous productivity of ColdFusion MX on standard J2EE servers and leveraging the unique capabilities of the entire Macromedia MX product family, I believe the ColdFusion developer community can be at the vanguard of creating the next generation of Internet applications.

Establishing ColdFusion as a key technology for businesses that want to accelerate their productivity on J2EE servers is critical. To continuously improve the quality of the user experience of an online solution, a development team needs to have the flexibility and productivity to respond rapidly to changing user requirements and needs. ColdFusion MX for J2EE finally gives development teams that flexibility, streamlining the development process, and increasing the velocity of innovation - ultimately driving long-term competitive advantage.

We are continually floored by the creativity and ingenuity of the Macromedia developer community. Already, we're seeing amazing examples of what can be created with the Macromedia MX product family, but as far as I'm concerned, we're just at the beginning. What's next? Well, that's in your hands.