Throughout 2009, momentum for web applications has gathered. Now, scarcely a week goes by in which I do not hear about a company that is heading for the cloud.
Email is usually the first port of call, but once an organisation starts to use cloud email, they find themselves quickly adopting other cloud services. Objections soon dissipate and CIOs take the plunge into full-on deployments of cloud applications ... and don't look back with any enthusiasm at their predecessors.
A couple of examples we covered this year are Altium, where Google Apps blew Exchange out of the water in terms of price and ease of implementation, and Mortgage Choice where CIO Neill Rose-Innes has decided to put the cloud first whenever he can.
I believe we will see a lot more of this in 2010, aided and abbetted by "single site browsers" that allow users to create a desktop application out of a website, replicating the experience of using a conventional application and therefore smoothing the path to web apps' adoption.
Mozilla Labs, which makes the Prism single site browser tool, has even hinted at deep integration with the desktop. In a blog post announcing the Mac OS version of Prism, Mozilla says it is considering:
- allowing web applications to register to handle particular content types;
- drag-and-drop support for uploading files to web applications;
- support for running applications offline (local storage, offline/online event notifications, caching of application components, etc.).
If browsers become capable of this kind of integration with the operating system, it will make webapps even easier to use, leaving CIOs with fewer excuses to ignore them.
Your editor ditched Outlook in early 2009 in favour of a GMail single site browser and can report it has made a massive difference to productivity. I see no reason the experience will not be repeated elsewhere and am salivating at the prospect of the integration Mozilla describes, meaning I happily stick my neck out with a prediction of web apps plus single site browsers being a trend to watch for the new year.