Google

A customer inspired me to look at how to improve SambaJAM, so that it would fit into their everyday workflow. Many of us use Google Calendar to keep a track of meetings and important dates. Well it is now possible to use Google Calendar while in SambaJAM.

Our Web Dashlet can be used to embed web pages of other sites and in addition allows users to embed their Google Calendars.

We have put together a guide below on how you can add your Google Calendar to your SambaJAM Dashboard using our Web Dashlet.

Some welcome news today, Google has decided to not support Internet Explorer 6 anymore with two of its core products, Google Docs and Sites (read about it on BBC news).

As Clarence mentioned in his blog, we have also taken the decision not to support IE6. We've found that IE6 (which is almost 10 years old now!) is too outdated to support all the latest advances in web application technology that SambaJAM provides. Instead of downgrading the experience for the end user for the sake of a dying browser, we decided to not support IE6. While on the general web this is an not an issue as many users have upgraded, as the BBC article highlights, there is still a large userbase of enterprise users who are forced to keep using IE6, and as an enterprise company this is something we are constantly aware of.

With Googles support, and increasing numbers of vendors deciding not to support IE6 anymore because of its limitations, we hope to see IE6 phased out sooner than Microsoft's 2014 end-of-support date. The web has moved on, and enterprises will come under increasing pressure to phase out IE6 if they wish to give the latest and greatest web applications like SambaJAM to their users.

Today Google announced their new Google Chrome OS here. This is a very interesting development and something many were predicting when Google launched Chrome last year.

For those of you who aren't one of the apparent 30 million users using Google Chrome, its a new web browser from Google. Why do we need another web browser when we already have Internet Explorer, FireFox, Safari, Opera and a hundred other browsers? Well Google noticed that many web browsers just aren't designed for rich internet applications like we build in SambaStream. A lot of new applications are written in JavaScript and use AJAX technology, which makes for extremely user friendly user interfaces that look and feel like your local desktop applications, but don't require any installation (saving IT departments huge headaches when rolling out a new application across large organisations) and run anywhere simply through your web browser. The problem with current web browsers is they run JavaScript pretty slowly, and unfortunately if one JavaScript application crashes, it will crash your entire browser. They don't also provide all the capabilities required out of the box (although they're heading there) for offline browsing, and slim interfaces that don't interfere with the web application's interface and available space to display them.

So Google created a new open-source web browser called Chrome to address these issues. Because we build our own applications at SambaStream on Google Web Toolkit, which essentially allows us to provide rich and fast JavaScript/AJAX applications for users, Chrome is great! Not only do our applications run faster, we can (in future) make them work offline (useful if you're on an airplane and have no internet but still want to use your applications) and also if another application crashes (because ours would never do such a thing!) it won't shut down the whole web browser and lose all your work. It also allows us to provide simple desktop icons so you can launch and use our applications just as you would a normal desktop application.

This is the future of how applications will be delivered. Through a web browser, with no installation required, just sign-up and point your web browser to use it, and all your data will be securely stored, backed up and accessible anywhere in the world. Not only does it save money, it opens up the whole way we work allowing you to do so much more than you could on you current desktop.

However, even Chrome is just a web browser, and needs to be run on top of another operating system such as Windows, MacOS or Linux, so while you can use your web applications on your browser, you still have to switch back to your local desktop applications, look after your data and manage your local applications, upgrading and patching them regularly as new updates become available. Now Google has announced the beginning of a new class of operating system (OS) - essentially all the OS does is load the computer, the browser will now become your user interface on which you will run all your applications, browse the internet and communicate. And better yet its open-source (also known as free to the rest of us!)

So why is this such a big deal? As we're a business software organisation I want to give the example of what small and medium size businesses currently do (the potential benefits and cost savings are FAR greater for large global enterprises but I'll leave them out for now).

Imagine this - right now you buy pretty expensive PCs, you install them locally, buy some servers to run your email and other applications, put them somewhere secure in your office, hire an experienced IT guy to run and manage them if you can afford, or if you can't, hire an IT support firm that will come in to fix your PCs and servers if needed, and generally that's quite a lot of the time. The fact is your current PCs and Servers run very complicated operating systems and software (such as email servers for your email). Complication = Complexity = more chance of something going wrong. On top of that, you manage all your data locally, if you're not experienced enough, you may have a security hole you're not aware of, if you forget to backup you could lose all your data...the cost of managing your data properly is actually very expensive, and the more security and redundancy you have the more expensive it becomes.

Now imagine the future - you buy a very cheap "thin-client" PC, which essentially has a screen, a keyboard and some memory. You switch it on, instead of waiting a few minutes for your PC to start-up, it starts almost instantly, because the fact is the operating system does nothing more than start your web browser. Its light, simple and as a result less likely to crash and have problems. You've just saved a lot of support calls and money. Secondly, the server can now go, because all your applications such as email, Microsoft Office tools, accounting systems, CRM etc. are hosted securely by SaaS vendors like SambaStream. The vendor provides the online software through your web browser, looks and feels like a local desktop application, but because the vendor provides it as a service, they take care of all the security, data backups and updates to the system. You now don't need an IT guy to support it anymore.

This is the vision we have at SambaStream, to provide enterprise-class applications for organisations of all sizes that need little more than a web browser and a simple monthly subscription to run. One day businesses won't need to pay lots of money to setup their IT systems. Just pay a monthly subscription, and get support for each application from the experts, the people who actually built the application in the first place and will be able to fix it faster than an IT guy who has to manage several applications and probably isn't an expert in any of them.

I personally don't think Google Chrome OS will have a huge impact anytime soon, Windows has become an institution for many people and I believe many businesses will take time to change the current mindset to move away from their current applications and way of working, but its a start and I'm sure within the next decade we will see a significant shift towards the vision I described, in fact I bet our company on it!