The Disappearing Desktop - It's Real This Time [long]

[Jan Schenkel]

--- David Bovill <david at openpartnership.net> wrote:
> 
> The main problem with the web service paradigm is
> for this sort of  
> application area. Noone is very happy trusting
> sensitive data this  
> way. Would you want your financial or medical data
> going over a web  
> service? Even if secured via HTTPS? Would you even
> want your  
> accounting information stored somewhere else? How
> about your contact  
> information and address book?
> 
> If the answer is no - that should not stop you
> taking this seriously.  
> Look at application areas where this is not a
> problem - for us we  
> intend to practice open accounting (works for a
> number of NGO's) -  
> for others this would most definitely not work
> (think Arthur  
> Anderson / Accenture).
> 

Hi David et al,

At my day-job, we offer a CITRIX-based online solution
for companies and accountants. The advantage is that
companies can access their data from anywhere on the
globe, while their (external) accountant/auditor can
do the necessary input of correction bookings.

As long as the connection is secure, you can rest
assured that the data is safe, as the ASP-providers
have rigorous backup and failover procedures in their
Service Level Agreements. And the application is
automatically updated for you to the latest version.

Consider having to setup your own server, paying for a
high-speed line in order to host it yourself, having
to backup it (we all know how often we backup our own
computers and keep a copy in a remote location, aye?)
and getting it back online when the whole thing comes
crashing down because of a failure.

Personally, I didn't think there was a future for
online accounting/administrative applications. But for
SMBs, it has turned out to be a cost-effective, secure
solution, providing global access to critical data.

Does this foretell the end of the desktop application?
Surely not: internet-enabled desktop applications have
their place, just like browser-based applications.

Until browsers offer more "widgets" that don't require
horrendous Javascripts to control the data entry and
limit the round-trips to the server, the building of
such solutions will remain hard.

Today, we can use Flash or Java applets to mimic the
user interface inside a browser, but how does this
differ from internet-enabled desktop apps? They run in
a browser thanks to a plug-in.

Does everything have to run on the server-side, while
a thin client shows the result of the changes after a
round-trip to the server? To me this sounds like a
return to the days of the mainframe, just with a nicer
GUI.

In a world where we're trying to squeeze the maximum
out of our computer resources through grid-computing,
the client computer can and should do a lot more than
sitting there as a dumb terminal (granted, it would do
the work of rendering 3D graphics and Quicktime movies
but that's not squeezing the most out of computing
resources, IMHO).

On a more positive note, as AJAX communicates with the
server through web services, we can use Revolution to
consume the same web services. In the end, the more
convenient access method will have the most users,
whether that's a browser-based or internet-enabled
desktop application.

Just my two cents,

Jan Schenkel.

Quartam - Tools for Revolution
<http://www.quartam.com>

=====
"As we grow older, we grow both wiser and more foolish at the same time."  (La Rochefoucauld)


	
		
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