What a letdown. When word began circulating that Google and Sun Microsystems were poised to make a joint announcement, speculation abounded that Sun's StarOffice (or its lesser open source sibling, OpenOffice) had been somehow transformed into a Gmail-like suite that Google could deliver as a service. Microsoft, your Office fatware is history! The network computer lives!
CEO of US-based hosted integration provider, Grand Central Communications, Halsey Minor, has a powerful message for IT: "In four years ... basically the whole notion of enterprise application software is going to be dead." He believes application functionality will instead be available as hosted, pay-per-use services delivered by companies such as Salesforce.com.
There’s a Web services sea change in the air and it may rival the transformation ERP caused a decade ago.
