I'm sure they're just resentful that someone is "forcing them" to rewrite what they perceive to be a fully-functional product "for no reason". And to be fair, that sentiment is by no means rare; that's why there are still COBOL programmers, after all, and to a lesser extent, "enterprise" OS distributions.
Take into consideration that while the bare functionality of Flash has been "replaced" by HTML 5, there is nothing that really comes close to actually replacing Flash the IDE, especially not in a way that Flash developers find amenable. I've been working with a group to convert a Flash game to HTML 5, and, to put it lightly, it's a massive mess. There is currently no clear migration path. The market is really lacking there.
Even Adobe has given up on pretending like Flash is a solution for applications now; the IDE has been renamed "Animate".
In any case, FedEx is pitting itself against Google and the web community in a way I doubt they really understand. Whichever upper-mid-level manager green-lighted this is pretty naive.
I am sure their ledgers say its cheaper, but is losing customers ever actually cheaper?
There are plenty of people on machines without good flash support, various mobile devices and odd browsers. There are tech savvy people who know flash is an entry vector for viruses. Then there are people who just can't figure out how to install it.
5 years ago I would have believed the loss in that column of the ledge would be smaller than rewriting an app. Today, recreating the app should be cheaper than ever and more people have already moved on from flash. 5 years from now this will be example of some kind, I think it will be an example of how not to hold onto dying tech.
They're taking $5 per purchase out of their budget, instead of spending $5 per purchase to fix the problem.
I wonder if this is a color of money thing. Are the management team attributing that $5 to IT to paint them as being an even bigger cost center and shame them into catching up with to 10's? I can't wrap my head around this.
Take into consideration that while the bare functionality of Flash has been "replaced" by HTML 5, there is nothing that really comes close to actually replacing Flash the IDE, especially not in a way that Flash developers find amenable. I've been working with a group to convert a Flash game to HTML 5, and, to put it lightly, it's a massive mess. There is currently no clear migration path. The market is really lacking there.
Even Adobe has given up on pretending like Flash is a solution for applications now; the IDE has been renamed "Animate".
In any case, FedEx is pitting itself against Google and the web community in a way I doubt they really understand. Whichever upper-mid-level manager green-lighted this is pretty naive.