ASP.NET vs. ColdFusion

The middle-sized company I work is looking to switch from lotus notes (thank god) to another platform. Currently the powers that be are looking between Cold Fusion, ASP.NET and Web Sphere.

Unfortunately the powers that be aren’t programmers and have little knowledge of what goes into developing an intranet. It’s up to me another to suggest one road or another. From what I can tell all three can perform the required task, however I’ve never programmed in any of them. Personally, I’m leaning towards Cold Fusion, but its possible that my only REAL motive is my frustration with IBM and my hatred of Microsoft.

What I’m asking is for any programmers who know or do any of these things to give me a suggestion as to which path to take in regards to expenses and ease of use.

Thanks in advance
-cts

What exactly do you need to accomplish?

An Intranet. MySQL and Access Databases. The intranet provides 200 some employees with daily/weekly news, calendar, processes time sheets and leave requests. We currently use lotus notes (which I find disgusting) as a hub, but IBM is depreciating lotus in the next 10 years and we’ve been screwed by IBM a few times in the past so we’re trying to make the change sooner than later. The design of the intranet needs to look good and be functional, but not overly complex, the common user isn’t a programmer so I can’t get to spiffy and get ahead of them. the current intranet is in lotus notes, but the powers that be dont classify it as an "intranet" because they dont use iexplorer to use it, they think its just an application that mimics an intranet. they are hell bent on an intranet they can go to with ie.

Hope that gives you a better picture
Thanks again

-cts

I don't have much experience with Coldfusion but I really like ASP.NET. Having code behind pages and the ability to design the User Interfaces similar to a windows application is really nice. Also, the power of ADO.NET is really nice as well. Plus, if you are using IIS, it is really easy to setup your webserver for ASP.NET support.

If you really hate Microsoft that much you can always try to get them to use PHP instead. It integrates really well with MySQL and is very widely used for data driven websites. Plus, it is opensource so cost is not a concern.

Our intranet here uses ColdFusion. I was never a fan of it (I'm a PHP/Java guy) but from what I can tell, when used properly, it's a great tool. Every system (it's a government intranet, think: bill/act/law lookup, HR, etc) is interfaced with CFM and back ended with either MS SQL or SAP. Most of the time, it's very fast - just by loading a page, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference in execution time between the CFM or PHP).

I suggest looking into ColdFusion. Especially if you aren't familiar with either of the three environments - CFM is pretty easy to learn.

Thanks. My "company" is Gov too and i'll remember your suggestion. it just sucks with gov because decisions like this take 5x as long as they should

defineatly go for cold fusion, it has the lowest learning curve of all languages.