It looks like IBM is taking a stab at building a web-based application suite to replace common office needs of email, spreadsheets, word processing (IBM plans Web-based desktop software). This is basically what we were trying to do at Agillion (previous job, long dead in the dot-com bust) only the Agillion pricing model was $20 per user, per month, whereas IBM says they'll charge $2 per month per user, with an additional $1 for each IBM application (messaging, document management).

It will be interesting to see if this gets any real momentum behind it. I still think web-based apps are a great idea, and it's pretty clear that Agillion's death was due to poor marketing and ineffective pricing choices, not a bad product idea. I could see spending $2 per month if that meant I would never have to use Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, etc. again. As it is, I refuse to pay Microsoft for their bloated, feature-crammed applications that sometimes end up wasting more of my time than they save.