Etelos Syncs Offline Data to Cloud

Etelos has released a limited beta that provides access to offline data -- a chief requirement for any on-demand vendor. The feature, called "Apps on a Plane," allows any browser-based application from the Etelos Marketplace to exchange data with any other AOP-enabled app, CEO Jeff Garon told CRM Buyer.

Last year, the firm announced it would deliver an online-offline sync capability. Since then, it has been privately showing the prototype to developers and others in the industry.

"What we have done is build a platform-agnostic distributed computing environment," Garon said.

Etelos' vision of SaaS, is "as a Platform as a Service, plus a marketplace, plus Web-based applications in an open standards-based environment," he explained, noting that the company's definition of the model allows a developer to write or distribute on just about any platform.

Patents Pending

Etelos has filed three patent applications for technologies underpinning AOP: one that enables browser-based applications to function offline; another that reconciles changes made while offline, and a third that synchronizes data with any other AOP-enabled application when returning to the cloud.

Essentially, the new system enables any Web-based application distributed through the Etelos Marketplace to function both offline and online.

Etelos AOP Beta is now available to users and developers.

Work, Uninterrupted

For developers, the beta offering means they can AOP-enable an existing application without having to change its code, Garon explained.

"What this means is that a developer can take any standards-based LAMP stack application and -- without changing a line of code -- put an AOP wrapper around it and use that application native with any platform, be it Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL), or most Linux OSes," he said.

"By not having to re-engineer an application, both developers and users can capitalize quickly on productivity opportunities," said CTO Danny Kolke.

The application is designed to work well with varying wireless and wireline speeds and fee plans, as AOP sends only incremental packets of information back to the home database.

Data is stored in both a local database and mirrored in the application in the cloud.

CRM for Google, iPhone

Etelos, which provides open source Web 2.0 applications in a hosted environment, is known for its glitzy add-ons. Shortly after the iPhone was released, it introduced CRM for iPhone, an application that provides contact, task, group, sales and project management, as well as group messaging and reporting functionality.

It also introduced a beta version of a CRM tool designed to work with Google Apps, about a week after Google first rolled out the productivity suite.