I just read a post by Alison Murdock on the Under the Radar blog. Google’s entry into the application software world is very interesting. However, as Alison points out, there’s a big problem with applications that only work on the web - they can’t be used when you are disconnected.

My experience is that most people just don’t think of this. Unless, of course, they are mobile workers like accountants, consultants, sales people, project managers etc. etc. They are the ones that suffer when a new web application is installed in a company and no one thought about the offline scenarios. Of course, making applications work on and off the web is our business, so I’m keenly aware of this issue. And so are the hundreds of organizations that have purchased offline collaborations tools.

This space is going to start heating up in my opinion. Apparently Firefox 3 will support some sort of offline capability for the Google apps. It will be interesting to see what they come up with.

I still think for the next while anyway, Microsoft will have the advantage in the application space as it’s our experience that the growing population of users on laptops require their productivity tools to work whether they have an Internet connection or not.

Barry.