The Asymmetric Web

I distinctly remember the day when it dawned on me that any application that can be made to work on the Web could be made to work on a private Web (i.e. an intranet). This might sound obvious now but I was thinking this thought a long time ago when Windows for Workgroups and Novell Netware were all the rage. Running a private Web - an Intranet - was not at all common at the time.

Then came a period when Intranets were common and all of a sudden, software companies were not only hosting their own applications online but also making them available for deployment on intranets for a suitable fee. I would argue that part of the (fading) attraction of a big application framework such as, say, J2EE, was the idea that once developed as a J2EE webapp, an application can be hosted locally in exactly the same way as it is hosted on the Web.

Then began an awful period - which continues to this day, sadly -- of companies developing intranet applications and then concluding, erroneously, that the application can be deployed on the Web by just flicking the proverbial switch. There is an important asymmetry here between intranets and the internet. Applications can scale downwards - from internet to intranet - easily but the reverse direction - from intranet to internet - is rarely simple and often impossible. Millions of users, flash flood characteristics[1], five nines availability[2] are just some of the reasons (collectively referred to as "non-functional" requirements) why this asymmetry exists.

That's ok. I can live with that. Applications can scale down easier than they can scale up. Fine. So where are all the Internet-class applications that I can deploy on my local intranet?...

There are some, but not as many as you would perhaps think. I can get Google in a box (although I don't know of anyone who has one). I can host a Confluence WIKI online[3] or buy it to run locally[4]. I can use Wikipedia or download MediaWiki[5] to run something similar myself...

This list thins out pretty quickly. I wonder why that is so? Are there technical reasons why applications like JotSpot or Writely or Flickr or SalesForce etc. could not be made to run locally? I don't believe this is the case. I think the reason these applications do not "scale down" has nothing to do with engineering and everything to do with business models.

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