Catching Up On the Server Side
Beyond the Browser
Fat and Rich—Furthering the Lead
The Microsoft Mobility Mission
Forms, Clients, and Developer Kudos
End-User Productivity Really Does Matter
James Governor
September 24, 2002
Packaged-app vendors such as PeopleSoft have invested millions in reinventing their rich-client apps as n-tier networked architectures ("100% pure Internet"). But in doing so they have created new problems based on the narrow boundaries within which they worked. Without significant client-side functionality, how can you offer effective, low-latency data validation to ensure the user hasn't made any errors? In short: you can't.
Developers found out pretty quickly how thin is too thin. Last year SAP, frustrated with its Web clients, announced it would build extensions and class libraries to JavaServer Pages (JSP) to make them richer. JSP may be pure Java and 100% standards-based, but rich it certainly isn't from a development or deployment perspective.
SAP says its enhanced version, "Business Server Pages" (or BSPs), will deliver the rich experience required by data entry clerks (allowing auto-completion of fields, for example) and business power users, by fattening up the browser.
There are easier workarounds than SAP's. Siebel 7, for example, offers "browser plug-ins" for often-used functions that browsers don't readily support. That avoids the reliance on traditional fat clients, but also means the app is no longer 100% open, thin, standards-and-browser-based. Microsoft's Outlook Web Access uses a similar strategy to provide Outlook-like functions within a Web browser.
IBM's sales force encounters this problem every day—the company's rollout of Siebel 7 is making the company's IT organization happier because it is easier to manage, but many IBM sales professionals have been disappointed by the fact the new client does not offer features they know and expect. Taking away people's rich clients creates new organizational issues and problems. And this is IBM! What about IBM's customers?
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