Rich Internet Application (RIA) is a revolutionary web experience that is intuitive, interactive, effective. RIAs offer the flexibility and ease of use of an intelligent desktop application, and add the broad reach of traditional web applications. It allows enterprises to create personalized, multimedia-rich applications that dramatically enhance user experience, increasing customer satisfaction and making users more productive. Since RIA runs cross platforms, enterprises can reach a broad audience of customers, partners, and employees with rich content and interactivity.

RIA client is capable of doing more than just rendering pages. It is able to perform computations, send and retrieve data in the background asynchronously from the user's requests, redraw sections of a screen, use audio and video in a tightly integrated manner, and so forth, independently of the server or backend it is connected to.

In IDC's view, an RIA provides a strong technical platform that effectively restores the client's abilities to be more like that of desktop software applications, or a traditional client in a client/server system. It fits into the traditional n-tier development process and integrates into legacy environments to extend existing applications without the need to rework them. And it also can serve as an interactive presentation layer above underlying Web Services. It is able to address various kinds of complexity. It enables development of applications that have complexity requirements, reducing the cost of development and frequently making development of such an application possible in the first place. The ubiquity of the Macromedia Flash player means that today most RIAs are running Macromedia Flash on the client as a lighter weight and lower-bandwidth application interface than traditional desktop client software. One benefit of these Macromedia Flash-based RIAs is their support for a broad range of platforms and devices applications work the same across operating environments and browsers. This can cut quality assurance time for cross-platform support and deployment while allowing for broad cross platform deployment. Because of their architecture and capabilities, RIAs have the potential to fundamentally change the way companies engage and interact with their Web users, leading to more effective user experiences with top- and bottom-line results.

Rich Internet applications offer benefits for:

Business managers

• Increase customer satisfaction
• Reach anyone, on virtually any platform
• Reduce time-to-market of new, innovative solutions
• Drive revenue through applications that reduce process abandonment and enable intuitive self-service
• Empower users to make more informed decisions and respond to changes faster

IT

• Extend business processes to rich user interfaces
• Create more interactive, dynamic, and engaging user experiences
• Increase customer satisfaction and make users more productive
• Utilize industry-standard programming languages and design patterns

Developers

• Efficiently create rich applications using a highly productive, standards-based programming model
• Combine rich data controls, visual transitions, and integrated multimedia components
• Customize the look and feel of your applications using a CSS-based skinning and styling model
• Customize the look and feel of your applications using a CSS-based skinning and styling model

Reference: Adobe Resources