Salesforce hits problems

This is why I said “give Six Apart a break” a few days ago. Turns out that Salesforce.com had an outage the other day too. See, this is why I don’t like this rush to the Web for everything. It’s why I like an RSS aggregator that stores my stuff on BOTH the Web AND my desktop or Tablet PC. Silicon.com has a better article on this.

This is why I say Steve Gillmor is nuts when he says Office is dead. Silicon Valley has been trying to kill the thick client ever since it came out. Sorry, I still want my data local. It’s what I really liked about Radio UserLand. Right now my data is at WordPress. Now, I like Matt a lot, but he’s in control of my digital life. If his servers get hit by a terrorist everything I have disappears. Not so if I had it stored locally as a backup like I did with Radio UserLand.

But, back to the Six Apart point. Truth is that these systems are still way too fragile and having a totally resilient system is extremely difficult. I’m certainly not going to throw the first rock here. But, I love having systems that have BOTH a Web and a local storage capability.

I look at Exchange’s email. I can get to it from a Web browser, which is great cause I can get to my email over at friends’ houses without having to carry my Tablet PC along, but I also have it stored locally (on several machines, I might add) so if something with the Internet or datacenter goes screwy I have everything backed up.

In all the Web 2.0 hype I don’t see enough emphasis on this. Look at Riya. I have to upload my photos to their servers to have the system work. Why can’t I do all that work locally as well and have a backup copy?

I’ll tell you why: adoption.

Most entrepreneurs (and even those of us inside big companies) know that you’ll get far faster adoption if you don’t make users install anything.

Which is why things like Salesforce.com are so attractive. It reduces IT costs by not forcing companies to install software on their PCs.

But, there is a cost. You’re looking at it in this post.