Hi VerlSnake,
Both LCDS and Cocomo leverage RTMP, the bidirectional
persistent socket protocol used in the Flash Player (it's worth
noting that LCDS also supports HTTP "near-real-time" data push as
well). Other than this overlap in data push, I'd say Cocomo targets
a few unique cases that LCDS does not, and obviously vice-versa.
:: Cocomo supports audio/video communications (via hub and
spoke streaming as well as direct client-to-client streaming).
:: Cocomo really focuses its design center around the social
aspects of multi-user applications. We firmly believe that data
push is an important element in multi-user apps, but it's only the
first element - Cocomo focuses on multi-user workflow, dynamic
roles and permissions, client-to-cilent messaging, and the sharing
of the "UI Surface" of an application - think of it as "user to
user" synchronization.
:: I'm not on the LCDS team, so I'm not speaking with
authority here, but LCDS provides rich connectivity to back-end
systems, including data synchronization to and from DataBases,
pagination, large dataset management, and server-based messaging.
Cocomo provides none of this.
So I think while there is a technology overlap, I think
there's a real difference in design focus. Also mix in the fact
that one is exclusively a hosted offering at this time, and there
are some pretty distinct cases for when you would use one or the
other - as well as some great cases for mixing and matching
both.