CRM on widgets+Apps on a Plane

By Vivek | May 4th, 2007 at 01:59 pm ET         

That is what is the future all your apps - Widgets on a Personalized page. And this is true even for enterprise apps used by small to large sized companies. Well, this concept not too different from the 90s based portals architecture, except now there is the advantage that anybody can extract the data and put it on his personalized page. While Teqlo, JackBe have done the hardwork by providing a sophisticated portal like platform to achieve this functionality, they might get bit complex for an average user especially in the case of JackBe that runs inside the firewall. 

So, what we really need are frictionless apps system that run right off our personalized pages. Appirio is doing a great job in bringing Salesforce content onto iGoogle, and Yahoo Widgets. I would say, a great option for existing Salesforce users who want to access data without browsing onto Salesforce.com. While Appirio widgets are for free as of now, you still need to pay for Salesforce. That would be a pricey option if you want to manage basic things like - contacts, tasks, appointment,….

Seattle based Etelos has been building its Etelos CRM suite that solve this piece of price point problem.  Etelos CRM works across 3 major platforms - iGoogle, Netvibes, and Windows Live and comes either for free or $12/user or $40/user($39.95 would have looked better). The full featured subscription will give you the ability to share tasks, appointments and contacts amongst users, while also delivering project management functionality. Besides that you get access to the source code of the application and the ability to either choose a hosting provider of your own choice or just host it on your own infrastructure. There are quite a few other feature additions planned for that would make the suite pretty comprehensive.

Etelos also has another exciting app under works - Apps on the Plane(AotP). AotP would enable porting of application into the Etelos Ecosystem that would enable them to function without being connected to a live Internet connection. In other words, off-line apps or as they say - Hybrid apps. AotP would create a version of your application and store is locally on your computer. Data sync would happen everytime you go online, automatically. Otherwise you can always work offline. Danny@Etelos claims that AotP goes beyond the standard caching ideas and adds extra layer of security to take care of access control around the data. Would wait for that piece of innovation to show up in the young hybrid app world.

Links:
Etelos CRM