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September 14, 2007
Online or off?
Online or off? A few days ago "a Microsoft spokesperson" sent Mary Jo Foley a list of ten questions people should ask themselves before using web apps from Google, instead of Microsoft Office. The talking-points themselves were quickly derided (The Open Sourcerer is a good example), but I think there's some real meat hidden amongst the innuendo. "What happens if a company needs to respond to government regulations bodies?" may be the showstopper for many businesses... businesses need direct access to their own records, and this can be difficult when the backend storage and administration is not under the company's own control. There's also a real good question in there about the different needs of different power users -- every software solution starts out by targeting a sweet spot of common desired functionality, but then matures to supporting more diverse audiences, more fully. When should the application logic be held locally, and when can it be held and processed remotely? Who owns and controls the data you generate? What type of customization and extensibility can you perform upon the application? These are all solid distinctions between local apps and remote apps, and deserve consideration. That email itself may have been written by a rogue MBA marketer at Microsoft, but complaints about its phrasing shouldn't ignore some of the issues the email raises.
Posted by JohnDowdell at September 14, 2007 11:40 AM
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