Leading The Evolution
OK, consider this the official announcement: we expect to release a new version of Solve360 in about 100 days. As outlined in a previous post by Norada's Steve Ireland, the new version will feature significant interface and performance improvements, and has been hugely influenced by feedback and suggestions from customers.
Instead of teasing users with hints about what Solve360 will look like and do, then staging a "pull the cover off the new version" event, we're going to do regular posts and updates as we approach launch date.
Of course it's not possibly to engineer a major upgrade to an application as complex as Solve360 in just a few months. The preliminary planning and development work began in earnest about 16 months ago, more or less coinciding with the emergence in the marketplace of the notion that something called Web 2.0 was coming. While hype and media spin quickly encrusted the Web 2.0 idea and sapped it of any meaning, the tenets that anchor the next Solve360 to the future emerged based on fundamental changes we saw driving the Internet application environment.
The tenets are simple and powerful:
The Web Is The New Desktop
Over the past couple of years, it's become commonplace to leave a browser and tabbed sites/apps running all day. As SaaS (Software as a Service) continues gaining acceptance, there will be a gradual shift in usage patterns until, perhaps a couple of years out, we all discover we're spending more time working from the browser than installed apps running off a local hard drive. For many of our users, this shift has already occurred: with reliable, abundant bandwidth available at low cost, faith that solid security models are in place, and the knowledge that their data is safer on our network drives than their LAN or local disk, they work all day long in Solve360. The new version will erase the lingering interface artifacts of the current generation of Web apps, making the usage experience virtually indistinguishable from a best-of-breed installed application. Technically, we accomplish this by AJAX-enabling the entire front end of the application and optimizing the back end databases and servers to dramatically increase overall speed and usability; functionally, it means instantaneous response to user inputs with no wait time for pages to refresh or data to be served up from the network drives. As we get closer to launch, we'll show you what this looks like in various areas of Solve360 rather than attempting to paint the picture with words.
Web Apps Must Be Able To Interact With Other Web Apps
Solve360 is distinguished from other email, calendaring and contact management solutions in the way it shares data between functional areas of the application, effectively bringing together multiple tools within a single interface. When properly designed, and constructed in line with a set of robust standards, the model can extend to bring other Web functions and services under the Solve360 umbrella. At launch, we'll have the capability to handle RSS and launch Google Maps from a contact's address field, and we're working with partners to integrate back office services ranging from spreadsheets to full accounting systems. While there's really no limit to the kinds of additional services that can be brought in the Solve360 environment, we'll be moving carefully to ensure that any service we offer enhances the value of our solution to our customers.
Your Apps Should Do Things Your Way
Many Solve360 users rely heavily on one or two areas of the application, such as contacts and email, and work with many of the same features in the same way day after day. Until recently, the nature of the Web forced us to force you to log into Solve360 and navigate through multiple menus before you could tuck into the tasks you needed to complete. The next morning (or at home that night) you had to log back in again, make the same menu selections, etc. There is a better way, or rather there will be in the next version of Solve360. In the new version, when you log in and set up the application to work the way you like it, we'll remember your preferences. The next time you log in, your Solve360 desktop will look exactly the way you left it, and you can pick up right where you left off in your previous session. We'll also allow you to have the multiple windows you use most often to be on your desktop simultaneously, and a change in one window that affects data in another window will be instantaneously updated. The above are just a couple of representative examples of how we're turning over control of the application interface to our users. The old model of forcing ever more complex nested functionality into never-ending menus, toolbars and icons, was born and will die with desktop applications. Going forward, well-written Web apps will employ a variety of techniques to ease the burden of use placed on customers. The idea of an "intuitive interface" will mean it makes sense to you, because you're able to set up your workspace to function your way. All the tools and functionality you use only occasionally (or perhaps never) are still available but no longer cluttering up your desktop or getting in the way of getting work done.
In rethinking and redeveloping Solve360 to embrace the above three tenets, we've taken an evolutionary approach that builds on the features and platform we've have honed over the last two versions of the product. We're confident, and our users have confirmed, that we've got a lot of the functionality and tools right over the last couple of development cycles. Where the new version crosses over into revolutionary territory is how we're leaving behind the framework and interface constraints of the current Web that force users into one-dimensional, linear, hierarchical applications in favor of a mutli-layered, openly configurable environment.
100 days from when George posted the article is mid-November. That's when the next-generation of Solve360 (codename "Canvas") will be available for demonstration and early adopters to start using the service. As was mentioned earlier, customers will be able to login to either version until the time is right to remove the current version.
Our single purpose is to serve the needs of the business user. To that end we a recently asked of all of our customers "What new enhancements would offer you the most value?" Based on the results of that survey, the initial focus of this update is improve the existing feature sets and complement them with related services such as instant messaging. I think you will be pleasantly surprised by the results. On the heels of this update there are many new features being considered and we are currently evaluating the addition of word-processing and spreadsheet applications. Our expectation is not to simply replace Microsoft Office but embrace the aspects of universal access and collaboration which is what the Internet and web offices like Solve360 are all about."
It should be mentioned that you can sync your Solve360 email with almost any mobile device available today using our IMAP service. Moving on to calendar, contacts, tasks and such... Sync is on our product development roadmap and the team will likely get started on it right after this upgrade is complete. We will likely focus on supporting a single popular platform such as Windows Mobile to ensure the service doesn't become a best effort just to get the "tick in the box", but instead becomes a truly easy to use (simple point-and-click), robust and useful extension of our platform. Although many companies claim to offer sync their feature is always underwhelming, and often doesn't even work.
Sync's legacy is a way to manage some of your personal information while not in front of your computer. Solve360 supports an advanced data sharing model so users can collaborate on the same set information in real-time. For example, multiple people could be changing your calendar and updating contact information. If you're working on a copy you're out of "sync" with your team. We understand both sides of this and our goals include over the air sync so we can minimize the gap between your synced set of data and your real-time data in Solve360.
I agree that devices can help teams improve productivity though mobility and universal access to data. However lets not overlook that Solve360 already delivers much of this benefit by being a web application; providing significant advantages over the old desktop software approach. Even savvy customers really only understand this once they've been using Solve360 for a few months. So today our customers rally around the web application, connect their mobile device to our mail system via IMAP (email sync), and take pleasure in that this is already much better than anything they've used before. Improving the web application itself is critical and the pay back is huge so all hands are on deck preparing an update that will really stir things up in this space; sync will be a really nice complement to that."