We attended the Office 2.0 Conference in San Franciso for the past 2 days. Many of the discussions centered around "Will people throw away desktop apps to use web apps? What about security? What about resistance to change?" and so on. Our position is simple: it fits some people's usage habits to use online apps - for example it fits mine well. For other people, their usage patterns and habits need installed software. Perfectly fine. Habits change.
I am personally of the lazy kind who never properly backs up data, don't keep all the anti-virus, anti-spam etc. up-to-date, and so on. Yes, "IT" is supposed to take care of it at work, but what about the situation of using the home machine for work purposes (what? you have never done that?) The reality is that in small and mid-sized companies, even in some large companies, lazy people like me are just too common and no matter how efficient and well-managed IT is, our PCs will generally be semi-managed.
So for this set of folks, it is just a relief to know that the data is in a professionally managed data center. Sure, disasters can happen even there, but I know my unbacked-up PC at home has a lot higher odds of failure. And such people will embrace online apps just to get out of those unwanted chores. Over time, other people will develop laziness - it is all too easy, trust me ;-)
So we are betting on laziness.
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