Enterprise application vendors have been promising this vision to their customers for years, but the limitations of traditional
HTML and JavaScript interfaces have made it difficult for Web-based applications to compete against desktop software. It's
no surprise, then, that some of these same vendors are among the first to push the boundaries with AJAX.
Scalix, for instance, a vendor of Linux-based messaging and calendaring products, uses AJAX to add desktoplike features to
its online server-administration tool and Web-mail interface. Indeed, the latter, called Scalix Web Access, is so similar
to modern desktop e-mail clients such as Outlook and Thunderbird that it's easy to forget you're using a Web-based application.
Users can re-sort their inboxes, view messages in a preview pane, and browse messages in different folders -- all without
the tedious page refreshes that you might expect from other Web-mail interfaces such as IBM Lotus Domino WebMail or Microsoft
Outlook Web Access.
"It's the best of both worlds," says Scalix CTO Andy Palay. "From the user's perspective, it doesn't have these major transitions
from one state to another. From an administrator's perspective, it has this wonderful feature where I don't have to worry
about installing software on every computer."
The story is much the same at NetSuite, a provider of hosted business apps. The company was built on the idea that small and
midsize businesses can save money by trading in-house CRM and ERP software for hosted services. But to convince customers
to give up their rich desktop apps, NetSuite had to offer a Web application that could do all the same things at nearly the
same speed.
That's where AJAX comes in. By compartmentalizing the various data sets displayed on the dashboards that customers use to
access the CRM database, NetSuite was able to add desktoplike features, including in-line editing and instant list re-sorting.
The dashboard now feels like "an application that we built, rather than a Web site," says Mini Peiris, senior director of
product management at NetSuite. "Being able to leverage AJAX is great. Our dashboard is definitely a competitive advantage
for us."
Just as JackBe helped Tupperware Mexico, both Scalix and NetSuite are using AJAX to decrease server load and network traffic.
For Scalix, it's a selling point: Customers may be more interested in buying the company's products if they see that they're
easier on the network and place less burden on servers than competing offerings. For NetSuite, it's a means of keeping the
company running efficiently even as its customers scale up operations.
NetSuite users, for example, can re-sort lists all they want without hitting the company's servers or hogging bandwidth because
that functionality is handled completely within the browser. Likewise, when a data point changes -- say, when a salesperson
edits a customer's phone number on one of NetSuite's dashboards -- the application only has to send the number to the server
and retrieve an updated list. In fact, under NetSuite's architecture the application doesn't even have to retrieve the full
list because portions are loaded dynamically as the user scrolls through them.
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