Google Gears and the death of the desktop

I was reading up on how to make a webapp available offline. I want offline runnable webapps. The biggest argument I allways hear about webbased (business) apps is: “Yeah OK, but what if my internet connection fails?”

I’ve got a whole array of ready made answers to these questions but in the end, the best answer should be “No problem, it just keeps runnig, with a cached dataset, look”.

So a while ago I stumbled on Google Gears. This holds the promise of achieving just that. Among a lot of blogs on this, I came to this one: Google Gears Takes Web Apps Offline. Look at the comments.

So what’s wrong with GG? A lot I think, lemme explain. On this post, on another blog, I commented about the problems we traditionally had with desktop apps such as problems of deployment, cross platform compatibility and maintainability. Yes, you have to install a webbrowser extension (users often dont trust these anymore), you have to copy some files from a website (again: users often dont trust these anymore), and then run the app locally.

The next issue I have with this is that the entire app has to be written in Javascript. I felt like being thrown back in the stoneage (about 10 years ago in IT land).

I want apps that just run, without installing anything on the client side. I’m probably living in utopia…

I think the desktop is going to die, but not at the hand of Google Gears…

ERP solutions of the future

The advantage that ERP systems have is the centralisation of data and applications. When we go to new customers we see a lot of excell islands all over the company.

The disadvantage is often that for small companies they are not affordable. Especially when they want customisation, which is often why they want a certain erp system in the first place.

So how can we address this? How can we make it affordable for small companies to have a piece of custom software?

Google CEO Eric Schmidt said at the Seoul Digital Forum amongst other things when asked to define web 3.0: “applications that are pieced together” and also ”very customizable”. (See the video on youtube)

With todays web 2.0 apps that all have interfaces and api’s, I believe he could be right! (think about freshbooks invoicing data that was written in Basecamp)

So, you make your pick from the web 2.0 apps out there (one or more) and provide the glue between them and maybe add some extra’s. Such services you could sell that to the customer. He ends up with an app that costs a fraction of the cost of a full fledged erp system, with the customisation benifits!

This could be the next wave for Web applications!

Custom Software differentiates you and your business

It is often debated whether to buy a standard package for your business administration or resort to custom software. In this post I explain my vision on this.

In today’s computer governed world, there is imho no business process that has not been implemented in software somewhere. If you google enough, I’m sure you will find something that could support your business. Maybe you will have to tweak your processes a bit but you should get a fit.

But wait a minute! SHOULD you tweak your business processes?

I vote NO!

What differentiates you and your business from all the other folks in your neck of the woods? They all sell apples, the same apples.

I believe it is how you sell your apples and how efficient your supporting business processes are. When it comes down to it, you do things just a little different to your neigbour. And you should! That’s what makes your business!

So, if you and fifty other applesellers use the same supporting software and hence business porcesses, your competitive advantage over them fades.

To resolve this, I say you should use a standard package and implement the things that separate you from the lot, in custom software.