Forbes Reviews AJAX Apps for Small Businesses

prostoalex writes "Forbes magazine evaluates the variety of AJAX-powered Internet-based applications and their suitability for small businesses. The office suite replacements Forbes magazine chose are Google-centric: Google Calendar, Spreadsheets, Notebook and Gmail are the winners of their respective categories. Pageflakes and YouOS are tied for the leader's spot in 'Webtops' category."

Comments

Thanks, Forbes

[generic-man]

"But don't throw away your desktop applications just yet. As a general rule, Ajax sites simply aren't as powerful or as useful as their desktop counterparts. Spreadsheet jockeys, for example, will want to stick with Excel for the foreseeable future."

I also enjoy how many of the "recommended" apps are only available for use on outside servers, so no company-confidential data should ever be placed on them.

Re:Thanks, Forbes

[XorNand]

To the IT-inclined, yeah, hosting data vital your business on someone's server can make you cringe. However, to 99% of the small businesses out there, they think nothing of it. All you have to do is look to the success of Salesforce.com to see that. Or even more common: How many small businesses use IMAP (either through a client or a webmail interface)? If their webhost suddenly closed their doors, they could potentially lose years of critical correspondence.

As an IT guy myself, I stuggle to explain this sort of stuff to small business owners. But them again, these are the same people who balk at the cost of DAT or DLT drive yet wouldn't even consider canceling their business owner's insurance policy. Go figure.

Re:Thanks, Forbes

[CastrTroy]

The difference is, is that you're paying salesforce.com, and there's probably some kind of confidentiality agreement that goes along with it. The free services on the other hand seem to have lots of issues that I wouldn't want to get involved with.

Re:Security wise... forget about it...

[CastrTroy]

On the other hand, a lot of businesses like to look at the bottom line. If using exchange server costs you $5000 for server and server software, plus $50,000 a year for a sysadmin, plus $100 a seat for outlook, then the offsite, no admin, no server, no software $50 per seat solution starts to look really nice. It starts to look even nicer if it's $0 per seat.

worse than every other portal site ever made

[LDoggg_]

Old portals had working back buttons.
Pageflakes sucks because of the oh-so-clever ajax naviagation.

No better than building the whole thing in flash or a java applet.

Serious question...

[Javaman59]

OK, I've had a look at some of these Google web apps, and they look great, and probably will, in short time, meet the claim of doing what most users need most of the time.

Hwever, every place I've ever worked in has used some feature of MS Office, or the MS Windows OS, which isn't likely to see it's way into Web 2.0 for a long time. eg. large documents, with multiple views (outline, page layout, etc...), databases with pivot tables, a COM based plugin, a Windows only accounting package. However, I work in high tech industry, which may be aypical.

So, I ask - are there any businesses which *only* use basic OS and web functionality for everything?

If the answer is "no", then I would conclude that most everyone is going to keep paying the MS Tax to keep the feature or two which they need, and seeing as they're already paying for it, they might as well use the the rest of MS Windows and Office. (which saves admin and training costs)