SalesForce.com Proves why "Offline" Capability is So Important

SalesForce.com is a hugely popular web based CRM application boasting more than 350,000 subscribers.  They are also often touted as an example of the resurgence of Internet based applications and are the poster child for the mythical "Web 2.0". But like other strictly browser based applications they have a rather significant flaw; they require connectivity at all times.

Recently the SalesForce.com application was unavailable for more than five hours leaving its users without access to their own data.  One person quoted in this Infoworld article apparently couldn't even access his contacts because they were stored online. 

With the ubiquity of WiFi and Broadband Internet access, many people have started to question why "Offline" capabilities are so important.  Simply being connected to the Internet isn't enough.  DOA attacks, Global DNS issues, and many other network gremlins can conspire at any time to separate people from the data and applications they need to do their day-to-day jobs. 

Had SalesForce.com been created as a smart client application, the downtime they experienced would have been more of a nuisance than a major catastrophe, one which they have yet to even acknowledge.  So Thank You SalesForce.com, for proving my point so well.  And also thanks to alert reader Jeff Combs for bringing this to my attention.

2 Comments

  • SalesForce.com has some great webservices... but they aren't all that reliable in my experience. Some times the calls will timeout and then complete a long while later after you've assumed they failed. Definately cool stuff, but definately not flawless by any means.

  • Sure, but SalesForce.com also fills a niche in serving companies that could not otherwise afford 1) a dba, 2) IT staff, etc... Sure ACT(R) or Goldmind(R) don't really take a dba or IT staff to run it day to day...but eventually an un technified (yes I made that up) small business will need one to either 1) fix their corrupted data, 2) restore a misplaced or deleted database, or 3) show them how they can all use the same database and share information.



    You raise some interesting points as to the downside of a hosted applications, but I can honestly say that I believe hosted apps will play a HUGE part in the future of productivity, CRM, Knowledge, and other biz applications simply because of its platform and location portability, absence of significant maintenance on the part of the customer.



    5 hours of downtime sounds more like a lack of planning and redundancy on salesforce's part. I obviously feel that five hours is crazy and people should be getting some credits for some kind of SLA infraction. However, there are pitfalls to client/server apps as well. Where I work, a big software company, we rely on both some client/server apps as well as a large amount of hosted "web" apps. Neither really has a leg up in my opinion as far as reliability...both seem to have equal connectivity issues....especially when dealing with a distributed workforce.

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