Category: Web/Tech

Up until the first of this month I worked at Sun Microsystems. We used Sun Rays which are basically terminals that I could put my smart card into and have my computing environment immediately available.  At Sun your smart card was your badge and it gave you access to your environment where ever you happened to be working. When you use a Sun Ray your whole computer is in a server room somewhere and the server just displays your environment where ever you are. Essentially your smart card is the key to accessing your computing environment.

Since starting at Intuit I’ve switched to a traditional Microsoft environment. What I’ve noticed though is that many people use their laptop the way I used to use a Sun Ray smart card. They plug the laptop into a docking station and then work on a terminal and  keyboard that is stationary in their office.

I totally understand that there are very basic differences in the two environments but if you think about it from a user perspective and don’t worry too much about where the CPU is located then you can  perhaps see the laptop and the Sun Ray smart card converging. in both cases you  plug them in and your environment shows up on  essentially a dumb terminal where ever you are.

I’ve talked about the Application Service Provider (ASP) model in a previous post. When I say ASP model I mean not running the application or keeping my data on my computer but instead  letting the application company host the application so that all I have to do it access the application and my data through a browser. As I said I really like the advantages of storing my data on the web. I don’t have to do backups and it is accessible.  In a recent posting John Montgomery of Microsoft talked about why we continue to use ASP applications when the user interfaces and functionality aren’t as good as those for the applications hosted on our own machines. I think his reasons are valid although I never think about the technology catching up. For me the advantage of being able to access my data from any browser and having someone else host my application so that I don’t have to be a system administrator is incentive enough.  And in a lot of cases I think the applications are as good or better.

I mentioned Plaxo in my earlier post. I recently sent out an update with my new email address and phone number to everyone in my address book. It has been so much fun to get updates from all my friends and catch up on what they are up to. Plaxo provides functionality that I’ve never had on a locally based application.

Another ASP based application that I have been very impressed with in the short time that I have been aware of it is Right Now. It is customer support software that is used  by Intuit for Quicken Medical Expense Manager  and for  Quicken Rental Property Manager. Right Now provides an easy way to manage and update common questions and answers and the customer support user interface.

Another very successful ASP model software package is QuickBooks Online Edition.  In this case although the functionality is less than the desktop version I suspect that  the quality of  the application, the fact that the user doesn’t have to administer his or her system, and the ability to access the application from anywhere have led to the success of the product. I should note that although I work at Intuit I don’t work in the QuickBooks organization and my observations are very much those of an outsider.

Bottom line is that while some applications are still better on the desktop than being run through a browser there are many other applications that I would much rather run through the web.