A stunning report from web services analysts Zapthink for portal developers predicts that today’s web-based portals will prove “wholly inadequate” to meet the needs of emerging standards-based, loosely coupled, distributed applications. The solution, the study says, will come from rich clients (plug-ins or new OSes), which will let portal users customize their on-screen experience and even optimize their workflow tasks — all without requiring server side developers to change a thing at their end.

“What we’ve realized is that the portal as the primary interface to complex applications in the enterprise will become more and more obsolete,” said Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst with ZapThink of Waltham, Mass. told IDN. “It sounds a bit like heresy, but the web-based portal does not really make a very effective interface to functionality that resides in many systems”

Even good-ol Microsoft Excel provides benefits, Schmelzer said. “Believe it or not, there is no better ‘rich client’ interface for web portals like Google and Amazon than using Excel because it lets me get data, sort my data and manipulate it.” Aside from the desktop, Schmelzer also said the increasing adoption of sometimes-connected devices, mobile computing, asynchronous computing, and e-Forms will mandate widespread and rapid adoption of rich clients.

Read more at: Integration Developer News