SaaS v’s Web apps v’s RIAs
A friend just alerted me to a Forrester paper on RIA’s entitled “eBay San Dimas Marks A New Era For RIAs”. (You can buy it from Forrester here).
Here is the introduction paragraph to whet your appetite…
The much-anticipated beta version of eBay San Dimas has arrived, ushering in a new era in rich Internet applications (RIAs). Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR, formerly known as Apollo) applications like eBay San Dimas take RIAs out of the browser and put them on the desktop. These desktop applications enable occasionally connected use, customized content views, and a branded experience that can act as a platform for closer relationships with customers. But desktop RIAs aren’t for everyone. Companies must assess whether their power users will benefit from the capabilities of AIR applications in a world in which the desktop will likely become very crowded.
What’s interesting is seeing this new class of application that is made up of both software (run locally) and services (accessed over the cloud). I love the model because it’s bang in line with the ethos behind izimi/sharenow in which I am involved. Of coures there are other examples of note, including Desksite, Maven, the eBay San Dimas project, plus a whole raft of new apps that are being developed on Adobe Apollo and Google Gears.
You’ll probably recognize the swing cycle we’ve seen over the last 15 – 18 years in software: dramatic swings from dumb terminals (all server side), through client/server, to internet (server side), back to java (it its inception, which promoted NCs that downloaded applets as needed which were run on the client), back to internet (as java initially fell out of favor), to …
History has seen different groups promoting their own points in the spectrum as the ‘correct’ best way, depending upon their own vested interests. But I think that is now passing.
What I think we see now is a maturity that causes us to take a less ‘fashion-conscious’ view, and one that sees us asking “where can we best do this bit of processing?”, and then creating systems which partition parts of the whole application where they are most appropriate. So, I love the principle of RIAs.
Its very interesting to think that the traditional Google supporters (with the concept of SaaS - software as a service) used to find themselves at war with the Microsoft supporters (and the concept of software that is installed and owned). Yet today with Apollo, Gears, and even Microsoft’s own positioning (they now speak of (”software AND services”) there may yet be a recognition that you choose the architecture that best suits each particular application on a case by case basis.
August 30th, 2007 at 3:12 am
This sounds like more speculation about what “might” be the right “architecture.”
There are three very distinct markets from my perspective; (1) corporates, (2) mature consumer, (3) emerging consumer. No single architecture addresses the stress points of all three markets.
The MSFT desktop manifesto serves corporate clients in a way that makes decision makers comfortable. You and I may not like it for any number of reasons, but corporates demand that “someone be responsible” for things like operating systems, integration, and the like. The emergence of services and companies to help corporates manage their morass of “open systems” crap is simply a reinforcement that responsibility and accountability reign in the corporate world.
The mature consumer market is the largest segment and dominated by those idiots who refuse to learn how to program even the simplest video device or even their phone. I know, you think of them as pensioners, but the truth is the audience is far broader and includes young CEOs who haven’t the time to sort out their Blackberry or Windows Mobile email client. They are the majority.
And then there is this small segment of the market that everyone wants to fight over because, because, because; well, because this segment of the market is receptive. And they are equal parts receptive and uncommitted. The are prepared to spend the moments necessary to configure their web spaces and named environments while posting to their 8 different communities. But these people change. They change their minds, their affiliations, their allegiances, and their interests and they do so at a pace that has absolutely nothing to do with your development cycles.
So, the question is not unlike that being asked by corporates; what are you doing about sustainability which should translate into my being able to rely on you, which should translate into affinity with your brand and maybe even a bit of loyalty?