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IBM To Announce Web-Based Desktop Apps
mgoulding writes "IBM is expected to announce a software bundle targeted to business users that will challenge the Microsoft Office package. Unlike Office, the email, word-processing, spreadsheet, and database products will be accessible to Linux, Unix, and heldheld users through a web server. NewsFeed posts the story from CNET." It's certainly something that's been tried before - witness sites like MyWebOS (no longer existing).
Although many of us here may see the immediate benefits of this over MS Office, has anyone ever been able to sway non-techie management away from Office?
What I care about is how fast will this run? Obviously it doesn't have to be lightspeed, but if dialup users can get it, then Microsoft is in real trouble! Of course, it would totally suck if this required IE, and I couldn't be happier that it wasn't built that way.
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Web based applications *suck*. I do not want to refresh the page everytime I change an option, I do not want to use some propriatary scripting language to run a word processor. The web was *not* designed for applications and applications will *not* run well on the web.
I'm not quite sure they are going to be able to administer a "giant blow" to the MS empire. Let's not forget that MS is a master when it comes to copy^H^H^H^H^H innovating on other companies products. Lots of money and innovation will prevent MS from being derailed anytime soon.
Ok, I can see this is good, because it means that OS will finally, hopefully, become completely irrelevant (I'm being an optimist here).
But how are IBM going to persuade the ravening hordes of MS Office users that their web-based apps will fail to suck?
Hotmail et al have had cross platform web-based email apps for years, and do they fail to suck? No, because while you can get at your email from where-ever you are, on whichever system, they are still nasty buggy and slow, and lack the features of even the worst (OE) traditional email apps.
How will IBMs web-based Word fail to suck? to win users from Word and OOo Writer etc it not only has to be as good as them, but it has to be better than web, and NOT rely on the web-based gimmick and the "OOh, shiny!" factor (which only lasts for a fortnight aat most anyway) to win over and reatin users.
I think IBM can pull it off. They had a really great product(s) in the Lotus Suite of applications. This includes Word Pro, 1-2-3, etc. This is a good strategy for IBM especially when it comes to linux. I use OO.o but I think it would be great to have another offering, especially in the workplace, to keep this market competitive in terms of features and price.
What would be needed in large shops is the ability to have it hosted internal. That way you're not dependent on the internet connection, just your internal network which should be a lot more failure resistant. This is starting to sound like citrix delivered apps, however.
Why don't they take OpenOffice.org, make it work with IBM file formats (lotus, EBDIC, AIXrc), and call it IBM Office.
They could even make a version for OS/2!
What difference does it make how cheap it is?
What difference does it make how fast it is?
What difference does it make how many features it implements?
What difference does it make how cool the interface is?
This is the SUBSCRIPTION MODEL! This depends on the web being up all the time. (which it mostly, but not always is) This brings in a progressive billing relationship. Who in their right mind wants to pay every month for ANY commoditized application? Existing WordProcessors are already so feature rich I can't imagine wanting ever to buy a new one. Same goes for Spreadsheets, Presentation Makers, even desktop databases.
Let's get real here. A subscription model is fundamentally evil and pointless whether it's being flogged by Microsoft, IBM or even by Linus.
Have we decided that IBM is our friend and therefore suddenly the subscription model is a good idea? (besides the price is so much lower than what Microsoft would charge) Let's remember where we came from and that one plus one is still equal to two.
the defeat of Microsoft won't necessarily make everything better...ank
Still hoping for Gentle Treatment...
The problem is the small print on the final product will be "Requires Windows and Internet Explorer 6 for full functionality." I've sick of seeing "web" based applications that require IE under Windows to work. Where do they morons learn how to program that they can't even write cross-platform applications for the god damn WWW? I blame Microsoft's indoctrination of college students by signing up universities for campus-wide licensing deals if they sign exclusive contracts. Once our university did that the courses started focusing heavily on Microsoft products. SQL server, Visual Basic, Visual C++, Microsoft's version of Java, Office, etc.
Your complaint is really strange - the web is almost entirely client/server. You've obviously no problem using Slashdot, and that's not much different.
I hate it when they try to make personal computing into a SERVICE rather than a PRODUCT. Internet access is a service, but word processing is not. I, for one, would like to keep it that way.
While this does offer a more universal way of running programs, isn't it also a more proprietary and inconvenient way? It's hard enough writing papers for school when Bellsouth accidentally cuts my intenet access, but at least I can still get into my word processor to type a bunch of BS to hand in.
Esoteric reference.
It's a web application server-based, so you need their special web application server, and no, you don't need to be conected to the internet to access things on your intranet. There are actually people who use webservers only for the intranet, right? :)
unlike pure Web applications...mobile users...can connect, quickly access applications and disconnect to do work offline
;)
So this is not a purely web based application. This is an interesting application. It must utilize something more than HTML because it can obviously persist a session over long periods of time. it also means this is more than a thin client. Would something like this be web service based? interested to hear the actual press release from IBM. Either way, this is a good thing as having another office suite with real corporate backing , not the fake kind, is a good thing.
I only say sun is the fake kind because they are
0wNzEd by microsoft now.
I tried for 5 years to come up with a clever sig...only to realize that I am not clever.
They did, and it was pretty cute. Lot's of upset customers when they killed it, as a matter of fact they killed the whole smartsuite. IBM made some reference to it in the antitrust case against Microsoft, apparently in order to receive a lower price for OEM versions of Windows they had to give up competition in the Office market.
Dear IBM Lotus Workplace Member,
During our regular verification of accounts we couldn't verify your current information. Either your information has changed or it is incomplete. If the accoutn is not updated to current information within 5 days, your access to word processing and spreadsheet on IBM Lotus Workplace will be restricted.
Go to the link below to update your information:
http://signin.workplace.ibm.com/foo-cgi/bar?id=123 45
Please do not reply to this email as you will not receive a response.
Thank you for using IBM Lotus Workplace!
http://www.ibm.com
http://erichsieht.wordpress.com/category/english/
let's see, here, now, I am going to trust my complete office tasking, confidential information and credit-card numbers, to the security of the wild and wooly internet?
yeah, right, like an Iraqi is going to trust the man in a hat who says, "Hi, I'm here from Washington, and I'm going to help you."
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
"What would be needed in large shops is the ability to have it hosted internal"
Well in the story it says:
"The company plans to charge customers $2 per user per month for access to the software, plus the cost of server software"
So I am assuming that the reason why you need to buy the server software is because you are hosting it yourself. Besides, I doubt very many companies would feel safe just sending out all there private information to IBM just so they can have a cheap word processor.
1) IBM is the largest services company out there. When IBM goes out to a corporate site and they discuss how many copies of Office they can buy, and how long they expect that version to be available and useful, that translates into a cost per year. Sure, the product may still be productive after a certain point, but there may be features in 200X+3 that a critical part of the userbase requires, and it's difficult to support more than one version for a large company. Therefore, whether or not the subscription model is spelled out, it's basically a subscription anyway-- just that all 3-4 years of Office 2000 were paid for up front.
2) Sure, the web goes down. Nobody is willing to state that the wires will never break or that someone won't back hoe through a fibre line. Personally, when my intranet goes down, I'm dead in the water. I can't get e-mail from critical people, can't send e-mail to critical people (same for IMing), can't use the centralized databases that make my life, can't use networked drives for my data that must be backed up, etc. Big companies already depend on their intranet being up 99% of the time, and they lose money / productivity when they aren't. Adding one more tool to the pile won't have that big of an impact.
3) Raise your hand if you've ever depended on your users to apply a patch! In a web subscription model, even if a web service cluster is deployed to each major corporate site, it's not only a smaller number of computers to receive the patch, but those machines should be controlled by the site admins instead of lusers who get so many requests each day that learning how to apply a patch and verify that it was applied correctly between taking their laptops to meetings never seems to happen.
4) Value added ISPs. TV is filled with ISPs who are selling their transparent proxies that will translate all graphics into heavily compressed JPGs because it's a value added service, consider a case down the line where a vendor can have Corporate Web Office Suite slimmed down to the same interface, but with Home Version features only. That gets the kids at home something they can use that's like what Dad uses at work at a minimal cost to the ISP (just storage of the local machine host[s], keep all the bandwidth in house where it's cheap). The Web Office Suite Lite company gets to indoctrinate all the home users as a nice benefit.
That still doesn't answer my question - what if there were changes made by someone else that are necessary to the inquisitor?
I've RTFA. Do you TBYS? (Think before you speak)
...businesses are finding it harder to make any money with that design,and it's constantly borken and compromised, plus being expensiv(er), and they are insecure when you have to police every single employee you have to not be lame with his or her box. The expense isn't aquiring the software, it's running it 24/7/365, the "running it" part is the only place cash can show up realistically now.
For the person at home,or very small shops where everyone is on a first name basis with each other, sure, totally free, in house customised, makes more sense, yep, like we have now is great,works fine, it's what I want too. For joe medium and big business, I bet this other model takes over more, because it will "just work" better. Simple economics and for security and ease of deployment, it just makes more sense for businesses to have a more locked down while still easier to deploy and use sort of arrangement,using cheaper hardware that doesn't obsolesce as fast, and when they can pass off the bulk of the technical details to a specialist company for the cheap fee of two bucks a month a head, well, they will take a hard look at that as a *good deal*.
If the monthly costs start to rise dramatically, or if they can't pull it off, if the business still suffers , hmm, "bogus-ness" instead of doing "busi-ness", then it will fail. Have to see how IBM and some others do this thing. It is sort of what redhat and novell/suse are trying to do as well, if you look at it harder, and IBM just dropped the gauntlet down on price, too, dramatically.* The larger difference with IBM is that it's net based, both intra and inter. That lets companies use very good quality server hardware, concentrate on those things, robust is good, and just use very cheap hardware that is plenty good enough for the desktop, and with bandwith what it is today in intranets, it will work just fine for most applications. Not all, but most.
*I didn't see what if any the up-front costs are. IBM would be quite smart if they made it free though.
There's a meatworld example that has worked out well, homeowner propane tanks. You get the large tanks delivered and setup for free or like a few dollars a year. The propane companies are interested in making their money from selling you propane, not renting the tanks. Yes, it leads to a vendor lockin, but it eliminates a ton of upfront costs when you don't have to drop a grand or ore to buy a tank and get it set up, that you only use for a few appliances, and they are kept reasonably honest in that if their prices start to suck, you can call them up and have that thing hauled off, at their expense, and go with another service, who offer the same thing. As a consequence, it's a decent competitive market (as far as any energy stuff sold is). You CAN buy your own tank, then constantly shop around for the best fill er up prices, but most people have opted for the free or cheap yearly rent model, just because it works out better, less hassle, more or less the samepropane price. Service is the main thing, do they actually deliver promptly when you need it, is the price fair enough.
I've used both at the same time, I own my RV propane tanks, but the bulk tank for the house was rented. Same deal with computers, small scale, good to own your own, use it as you wish, large scale in a commercial setting, let a serious computer do the heavy lifting, access it with a fast decent terminal that won't need to be "upgraded" any time soon and doesn't break and can be made to be secure and require little in the way of maintenance. I bet most companies desktops could be replaced with diskless clients with a few gigs of ram installed.