By Erika Morphy CRM Buyer Part of the ECT News Network
04/21/08 3:37 PM PT
Etelos is currying favor with road warriors and developers alike with the introduction of its Apps on a Plane platform-agnostic beta. It allows users to access Web-hosted applications offline, and it automatically syncs offline and online data when they return to the cloud.
eMarketer Whitepaper: Optimizing the E-Commerce Experience
From the Web to the Contact Center, are you prepared to proactively engage and keep your savvy customers? Read how e-commerce leaders are optimizing their sites with ratings, reviews, live help, Web analytics, mobile and more.
Etelos has released a limited beta that provides access to offline data -- a chief requirement for any on-demand vendor. The feature,
called "Apps on a Plane," allows any browser-based application from the Etelos Marketplace to exchange data with any other AOP-enabled app, CEO Jeff Garon told CRM Buyer.
Last year, the firm announced it would deliver an online-offline sync capability. Since then, it has been privately showing the prototype to developers and others in the industry.
"What we have done is build a platform-agnostic distributed computing environment," Garon said.
Etelos' vision of SaaS, is "as a Platform as a Service, plus a marketplace, plus Web-based applications in an open standards-based environment," he explained, noting that the company's definition of the model allows a developer to write or distribute on just about any platform.
Patents Pending
Etelos has filed three patent applications for technologies underpinning AOP: one that enables browser-based applications to function offline; another that reconciles changes made while offline, and a third that
synchronizes data with any other AOP-enabled application when returning to the cloud.
Essentially, the new system enables any Web-based application distributed through the Etelos Marketplace to function both offline and online.
Etelos AOP Beta is now available to users and developers.
Work, Uninterrupted
For developers, the beta offering means they can AOP-enable an existing application without having to change its code, Garon explained.
"What this means is that a developer can take any standards-based LAMP stack application and -- without changing a line of code -- put an AOP wrapper around it and use that application native with any platform, be it Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL), or most Linux OSes," he said.
"By not having to re-engineer an application, both developers and users can capitalize quickly on productivity opportunities," said CTO Danny Kolke.
The application is designed to work well with varying wireless and wireline speeds and fee plans, as AOP sends only incremental packets of information back to the home database.
Data is stored in both a local database and mirrored in the application in the cloud.
CRM for Google, iPhone
Etelos, which provides open source Web 2.0 applications in a hosted environment, is known for its glitzy add-ons. Shortly after the iPhone was released, it introduced CRM for iPhone, an
application that
provides contact, task, group, sales and project management, as well as group messaging and reporting functionality.
It also introduced a beta version of a CRM tool
designed to work with Google Apps, about a week after Google first rolled out the productivity suite.
The Battle for Mobile TV Standard Dominance April 08, 2008
There are multiple mobile TV standards out there, including Digital Video Broadcasting Handheld, TDtv, 1seg and MediaFLO. The European Union recently announced it is backing DVB-H as its preferred technology.
Related Stories
If You Build It, Measure It or Blog About It, Will They Come? February 12, 2008
"Even though I GET the idea that people need to account for investments in a business in some way, what just drives-me-up-a-wall sometimes is that it ALWAYS has to have some tangible NUMBER associated with it. I GET IT! NUMBERS ARE IMPORTANT FOR BUSINESSES AND THEY ARE A USEFUL GAUGE FOR RELATIVE SUCCESS OR FAILURE. I GET IT! But, know what? That isn't ALWAYS the best measure," fumes CRM consultant Paul Greenberg.
iPhone for CRM: Silk Purse or Sow's Ear? July 25, 2007
NetSuite has just introduced native support for the iPhone and the Safari browser in SuitePhone, which is compatible with its own product line and its role-based dashboards. With SuitePhone, iPhone users can remotely access invoicing, accounts receivable and payroll. They can also enter leads, file expense reports, view contacts, and even place quotes and orders.
First CRM for Google Apps Out of the Gate March 02, 2007
Etelos is basically a bare-bones CRM application with little functionality around service, marketing or contact center operations. In its favor, though, it does address the security issue. "Enterprise customers will have the ability to select the hosting environment for their application and implement any security measures they see fit," Eric Berto, a marketing specialist for Etelos, wrote in a blog posting.
Related News Alerts
More by Erika Morphy
Ballmer Gives Shareholders - and Dell - Cause for Optimism November 20, 2009
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was all smiles at the company's shareholders meeting, as he touted the early success of Windows 7. Ballmer's cheer may have been contagious; after posting a massive earnings decline for the third quarter, Dell needed some good news to latch onto, and the prospect of broad enterprise adoption of Windows 7 could spur PC sales.
AA.com Sucks the Fun Out of Trip-Planning November 20, 2009
Using AA.com to book a flight was a painful experience. Densely packed, disorganized information was displayed in an unattractive format. On the plus side, it did seem as though the deals American Airlines advertised were real and not mere bait-and-switch lures. For anyone who wants a travel-planning Web site to inject a little pleasure into the experience, though, I say look elsewhere.
Salesforce.com Pumps Up Volume of Workplace Chatter November 19, 2009
Salesforce.com has developed a collaboration platform that puts social networking to work. Salesforce Chatter facilitates employee collaboration on projects through Facebook-like profiles, status updates, feeds and groups. The question remains whether employees will be as open to social networking in the workplace as they are in their personal lives.
Headline Feeds
Talkback: 
