While browsing the Supply Chain Management Review site recently, I stumbled upon the article What Supply Management Can Learn From MySpace, and I was scared. Although not as bad as Facebook, I still think of it as a time-sucking black hole filled with meaningless banter between teens, twenty-somethings, and the unemployed – with poorly designed pages that would burn a good designer’s eyes right out of their sockets to boot! (I did investigate it back when it was new – I signed up, looked around, quickly came to the conclusion that it was too much effort for too little return, and abandoned it.) The only thing it’s useful for, from a business perspective, is to discover new artists – which is only good for those looking for bands to book or labels looking for bands to sign. Not really supply management.

I read the article anyway, just to be sure they weren’t advocating its use and that my view of the SCMR as one of the better publications wasn’t misplaced, and it had a few good points. It noted that to succeed in this quickly changing tech-savvy world, companies must think, even “work”, differently. Which is true, but this doesn’t mean embracing every fad that comes along – it means finding new technologies and processes that actually improve productivity. The goal of business is to be productive and make money, not socialize with friends. (This may be the goal of most big business executives, but it’s not the goal of business. )

It also pointed out that communication, globalization, and on-demand collaboration is a good thing. I agree, but remembering that communication implies (a two-way) information exchange, I don’t often see much of that on MySpace. It’s not as global as you might think. And it doesn’t really enable collaboration the way that new sourcing and supply chain offerings from the leading on-demand vendors (like Arena, Iasta, Salesforce, etc.) do.

The article also pointed out a few technological trends that are important:

• broader-based adoption of PLM technologies
• emergence of CAD and PDM lite technologies
• standardization of collaboration features
• unilateral migration to service-oriented architectures

I agree that these are important, but I would question whether they are business equivalents of MySpace, for these achieve effective goals in the business world due to their differentiation from MySpace, not their similarities.

In short, while I will admit that the notion of examining new developments in social technologies as a means of drawing inspiration has merit, the notion of trying to create innovative business applications by creating something that is equivalent to a social networking sites does not. First of all, there’s no guarantee that it will bring any business value in terms of productivity or cost savings. Secondly, there’s no guarantee that it’s not a fad, and that people will want to use it by the time you have a business equivalent. Thirdly, you’re blurring the world between business and pleasure, which is a slippery slope to be sliding on.

So while I agree you should always be on the lookout for new and better technologies, I’d be cautious about jumping on the bandwagon of the next social network fad that comes along. Chances are that, in the long run, it will be nothing more than a drain on your time and resources. There’s a reason that a large number of organizations in the public and private sector have blocked access to sites like MySpace and Facebook. If I were you, I’d take the clue.

I recently read an article over at Knowledge @ Wharton on Software’s Future where they said that there is a drive toward hybrid desktop/webtop software, that there are limits to both approaches, and that the future for software may be a blend of the best features of both, that really got my attention.

The focus of the article was on the fact that Adobe Systems, Microsoft, and Google recently made new product announcements around advancements that they believe will be the future of software. Adobe with its buyout of Virtual Ubiquity that created a web-based word processor on Adobe’s new software development platform, the AIR, that can run on-line or off-line; Microsoft with its Office Live Workspace that extends Office and allows users to store and edit documents on the web and share them with others; and Google with its “Gears” that allows developers to create web applications that can also work offline. Based on these offerings, the experts at Wharton are predicting that the hybrid software model is going to emerge and take hold and be long-lived.

Furthermore, they are predicting that this new hybrid software model will develop in two phases. In the first phase, web-based applications that offer the same features as current desktop applications will become common. In the second phase, web applications and desktop software will co-mingle and the functionality advantage of desktop software will erode.

Well, this would be a great prediction – if it wasn’t for the fact that phase 2 exists today and has existed for a long, long time. It’s called Fat Client, or Thick Client, and some on-demand software as-a service providers, like Iasta, have been delivering software in this model for years! Now, you might say that it’s not the same because browsers are ubiquitous and fat clients tie you to a single platform, but that’s just not true.

First of all, there’s nothing stopping you from writing your fat client application in Java, which is as multi-platform as you can get. Secondly, should you decide you’re going to use Flash or Flex, you’re not even going to be compatible with every major web browser, yet alone every platform. The most popular browser is still IE and, guess what, that’s Windows only. Microsoft abandoned IE support on Mac years ago. Opera, still not that popular, even though it had most of the innovative features that you find in today’s browsers first, is only PC, Mac, and mobile. Only FireFox comes close to covering today’s common platforms, namely PC, Mac, and Linux, but don’t expect every plug-in or extension you commonly find on the PC to be available cross-platform. Basically, the web-browser is not universal, as not all browsers even support CSS fully and identically, and has no advantage over a well-designed Fat Client in Java.

Thirdly, and most importantly, whereas web-browsers and plug-ins are encapsulated from the underlying operating system and don’t give you a lot of control over local processing and no capability to save or cache data locally, Fat Clients give you the best of both worlds. You can work locally, or over the web. And since there are a number of open source browser projects out there, including the Mozilla technology base that FireFox is built on, there’s no reason a Fat Client can’t include a browser if that’s what you feel you need for that web experience.

Let’s face it, the web isn’t what you see through your browser, the web is a set of services that can be defined and encapsulated in protocols such as HTTP, FTP, SMTP, etc. that constitute the application layer of the internet and that run on TCP/IP. The browser is one way you can view data that is available over the web, but it’s not the only way.

So next time someone suggests “Fat Client”, don’t dismiss it as current generation technology or something that isn’t “web” enough. Done right, “Fat Client” is the hybrid future of software technology. It’ll let you work locally on a document or your own spend data set and then let you collaborate over the web and share your document or data in real time when you’re ready. It’ll let you use your local laptop resources when you’re on the plane and without internet connectivity and a remote server when you’re online. And you don’t have to worry about downtime due to internet failure. Let’s face it – even if you’re SaaS provider does have 99.999% up-time, that’s useless if your local city construction crew accidentally slices through your T3 internet connection and takes your internet connectivity down for a couple of days. So forget about the Thin phase – it’s time to get Fat!