I have been reading “The World is Flat” by Thomas L. Friedman. So far I am only up to page 121 of 569. So I have a ways to go. The book is mostly observations about the trend he sees -- that work is being done on a global scale now. He talks about outsourcing, insourcing, collaboration, and a bunch of other stuff.
A part of the book validates my plans for ArrowStorm. It talks about how many software businesses are moving towards being web-based. Instead of buying an expensive software license, maintaining the database, performing backups, and keeping up with updates -- there is a move towards using software online and letting the host company worry about that stuff for a monthly fee. There is nothing really that new here -- people have been thinking about this for quite a while. It was called the ASP model. The main difference now is that the practice is coming into its own. It is still leading edge. Acceptance has been slow. I think part of that has been because the technology and the infrastructure were not mature enough. Now, high-speed internet access is no big deal. And new software techniques like Soap (Web Services), and espically now Ajax (which gives a browser app a much better user experience) are getting things going.
Some examples of this trend are salesforce.com, which does Customer Relations Management (CRM), and QuickBooks, which now has an online version.
At ArrowStorm, our plan is to do this with certain selected vertical markets. Our first market is pretty narrow. It is the swimming pool service industry. The product has been named PoolCarePro. We are not alone doing this. Software Outfitters, out of Overland Park, KS is doing it too with their PoolSync product. To me, this competition is a good thing. It is another validation that the concept is feasible. And it gives me a target to aim for. We plan on expanding to other markets once we get this one going. They will probably be similar service-oriented, small-shop businesses such as lawn care, pest control, HVAC service, etc.
Just a little brainstorming gets all kinds of ideas flowing as to what kinds of things we can offer the market. Everything from PDA's and GPS to online payment processing and in-the-field data collection and billing.
The trick is to get enough of a product out there to attract enough customers who are willing to pay $30 to $50 per month, so that we can get enough income for the business to be viable. We are not at that point yet. We are in development mode. We have a rich-client version of the product that was aimed at larger offices. The web-client version is well underway and we actually have a few people playing with it. Our goal is to be far enough along so that we can sign up paying customers by later this fall.
I still like rich-client software development much better than web-client development. When everything is running at the client, the user experience is much better. And code development is better because the code-test-debug cycle is much shorter and cleaner. But web-client is getting better with tools like ComponentArt's Web.UI suite. Now I can do a lot of transparent post-back stuff, such that the user can interact with a web page, getting and storing data, without the page refreshing every time. It's pretty cool.
So -- I think we are on the right track. I just hope we can pull it off in the long run. Time will tell...