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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).
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.
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.
I remember hearing the same kind of sceptisism regarding webbased mail providers.
The applications DID suck. However nowadays, everybody takes it for granted and just uses them.
We post millions of standards compliant webpages everyday with blogging/web publishing applications. YOU even used one yourself.
Take this simple little comment box I'm filling in right now. I want to just write something and post it back. I dont want extra faffing with complex tags and escape codes - however - if I need them they are there.
There are still applications which are better suited run locally (video editing online anyone?) but for the greater majority of admin/office tasks, the web/intranet makes an ideal adaptive environment.
liqbase
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.
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.
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?
"Oh, right. Cuz everyone loves subscription-model software pricing. And you get the added bonus of not owning your data any more."
Right That is why no one pays for Everquest, UO, or any of the other of hundereds online games?
What I find odd is that you pay for Everquest to start with? I have played it but isn't it usless with out the internet?
"These ideas suck. "
You opinon.
"Which is why I'm glad IBM isn't pushing them. If you RTFA it's very clear that this is meant for enterprise environment: you have the apps living on the server down the hall rather than installed on every Joe User's PC. But it's flexible so that it can also run by itself on your laptop and then sync up when you plug it back in."
I did read the artical and your right for now. The big question is what about the future? Do you really think that there is no reason for the average home system to be replaced with something a little more suited to the consumer than the Current WindowsXP/Intel combo? I find it strange to use the same codebase for a server running a bank and a system for a kid to play UltraMegaShooter 8000.
Does the home user want to pay $495 for office or two dollars a month for online access to software?
Who knows but to dismiss it seems a to be unreasonabile.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
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.