Interesting announcement and coverage today (here, here, and here) from Bungee Labs about the public beta of a new version of BungeeConnect. Essentially this is a pure SaaS application development environment for programmers. They are defining "platform-as-a-service" slightly differently than Salesforce.com as:
"a single environment for delivering the entire software lifecycle as a service to increase productivity, shorten time-to-market and reduce overall costs for enterprise-class applications."
…and pointing out that the Salesforce approach requires a plug-in for working off-line whereas they do not. Is that the right approach? I’m not sure yet but the Bungee folks point out that although "off-line access has been a high discussion point" the "developers" told them "that if they are building live apps with interact services they couldn’t imagine why they would want to develop offline."
The off-line/on-line debate is an interesting one especially if you look at how Google launched Google Gears almost a year ago to enable off-line usage of its on-line apps like Gmail and Google Reader because "One of the most frequently requested features for Google’s web applications is the ability to use them offline." Maybe this is an application usage (end-user) vs. application development (developer) argument?
Venture Vice 
The online/offline debate seems to me to be a rather silly one.
The basics are pretty straightforward. There is a lot of data that I want offline – even if it isn’t guaranteed to be the most up to date. Why? because I am in places where there is no online – or I don’t want to pay for it; because the staleness doesn’t bother me; because the data don’t get stale very often (how often does my neighbour move house and what’s her number again?).
While assuming that I will get to the network to get everything I need or want is a wonderful ideal, it won’t happen. I watch as people struggle to pull itineraries off their blackberries when I simply consult the piece of paper. I look at the gyrations in the cab as someone opens the laptop to get the address. I look at a piece of paper. I see people working hard to get the airline data about which gate to go to. I look at the monitor or call the airline.
Yes we CAN do much of what we need over the network. Yes it does help us with the most up to date data. But we deal with ambiguity really well. Quicken offline and my bank hardly ever agree – I am not sure what transactions have occurred yet at the bank, even if I have posted them to Quicken. As long as I can make sure I don’t oiverdraw, life is good. I need accuracy not precision.
I like all my data offline, and auto refreshed when I happen by a network connection. It needs to be transparent of course, but I really don’t want to have to hook to any service just to get something simple done. So if we are going to have paaS working properly, the platform has to embrace my devices too, so that the experience is seamless whether I am on or off the network.
Spoken like a true user, for sure! I know how hard it is to get a decent experience, but I still want it.
Chris
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