Web-based architecture lets Zimbra combine e-mail with other applications in novel ways, he said.
"The big thing is e-mail-based 'mash-ups.' The Web is becoming this platform for collaboration. Why should we isolate e-mail?" Dietzen said.
Earlier this year, Google Maps, one of the first applications to make the benefits of AJAX development clear to a broad audience, emerged. The program enables people to use a mouse to move a map image around the screen.
Zimbra programmers have used the same techniques to make e-mail clients and servers more interactive. The company's Web-based client provides dragging and dropping calendar items and searching for past e-mails--features typically found in desktop software such as Microsoft's Outlook and Lotus Notes.
In addition, the Web-based client uses XML to combine e-mail with other applications. For example, a tie-in to the Google Maps Web service enables people to mark the location of a meeting with a Google Maps image inside the calendar application. There are also links to some packaged applications that could allow a sales person, for example, to click on a purchase order in an e-mail and pull up the relevant information directly from Oracle Financials.
AJAX-style development allowed Meebo, a San Francisco-based start-up, to jump into the instant messaging market without compromising on features, co-founder Sternberg said. The Web-based instant messaging client is expected to go into beta testing later this fall.
Even Microsoft is showing interest in the development technique. The next version of its Hotmail service, code-named Kahuna and now in beta testing, relies heavily on Microsoft's AJAX tooling . The same goes for the next Yahoo Mail client, which went into limited beta testing earlier this month.
Because these emerging AJAX-style applications are Web-based, they can be hosted outside a company network. They can also run on any operating system rather than just on Windows, analysts said.
On top of being cross-platform, Web applications can be accessed from multiple locations and from handheld devices or PCs. In addition, the Web approach could make administration of business applications easier, as it provides a built-in mechanism for backing up data and sending out updates, proponents said.
Developers can also take advantage of XML and Web services standards to fetch information from back-end data sources. For software users, this means that information on a Web page, such a search result or RSS feed, can updated automatically and without a reload of the page.
For all its promise, widespread use of AJAX still faces some hurdles. The development tools for writing AJAX-style applications are not as sophisticated as for other programming languages, industry executives said. To address this, products designed to make AJAX programming simpler have been released by a few companies, including JackBe, ClearNova and Midnight Coders.
Microsoft's grip
Although the idea of a Web-based alternative to
Microsoft Office may sound threatening to the software giant, the company's
products are deeply entrenched, particularly in the corporate market. The
training costs associated with replacing Office alone make switching away from
it very unlikely, said Joe Drouin, global chief information officer at TRW
Automotive.
"The Windows-Office platform has become second nature to people," Drouin said. "There would have to be an amazingly compelling business case to convince me to go out and retrain 24,000 people on an all-new desktop environment, an all-new office environment and an all-new way of working."
For corporations, Microsoft has also gone to significant lengths to bring the benefits of Web server-based administration to Windows on the PC. For example, one feature called ClickOnce which will be available later this year, lets administrators install Windows applications from a server.
Microsoft executives argue that the rich graphics capabilities of native Windows applications, including multimedia, will outshine Web-only editions.
"The new kind of applications ISVs (independent software vendors) can make (with Windows Vista) will be dramatically different from what's possible with the Web application model. I think it's clearly differentiated," said Greg Sullivan, group product manager in charge of the Windows Vista client in a recent interview.
Still, the arrival of Web-based applications with user interfaces as good as those in PC applications is a big change. The shift is big enough to make the Web browser, 10 years after its invention, more appealing as a way for people to work with software.
"The advent of AJAX has the ability to create a structural shift people didn't see coming," Meebo's Sternberg said. "The Web wasn't ever as functional or useful as client software, and AJAX just knocks that ball out of the park."
CNET News.com's Mike Ricciuti contributed to this report.
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