Is automatic upgrades a realistic feature to expect from enterprise Web applications?

Question

Most of the work I do is with what could be considered enterprise Web applications. These projects have large budgets, longer timelines (from 3-12 months), and heavy customizations. Because as developers we have been touting the idea of the Web as the next desktop OS, customers are coming to expect the software running on this "new OS" to react the same as on the desktop. That includes easy to manage automatic upgrades. In other words, "An update is available. Do you want to upgrade?" Is this even a realistic expectation? Can anyone speak from experience on trying to implement this feature?

Answer 1

One of the primary reasons to implement an application as a web application is that you get automatic upgrades for free. Why would users be getting prompted for upgrades on a web app?

For Windows applications, the "update is available, do you want to upgrade?" functionality is provided by Microsoft using ClickOnce, which I have used in an enterprise environment successfully -- there are a few gotchas but for the most part it is a good way to manage automatic deployment and upgrade of Windows apps.

For mobile apps, you can also implement auto-upgrades, although it is a little trickier.

In any case, to answer your question in a broad sense, I don't know if it is expected that all enterprise apps should make upgrading easy, but it certainly is worth the money from an IT support standpoint to architect them to allow for easy upgrading.

Answer 2

Well, it really depends on your business model but for a lot of applications the SaaS model can end up biting you. It's great for a lot of things but for some larger applications the users are not investing as significant amount up front and could possibly move to something else before you've made any money.

See

http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-218408.html

and here

http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2008/07/21/SoftwareAsAServiceWhenYourBusinessModelBecomesAParadox.aspx

for more information

Answer 3

If you're providing a hosted solution, I wouldn't bother. Let the upgrade happen silently (perhaps with a notice that you did it). If you're selling an application that's hosted on their servers, let the upgrade decision be made by a single owner, not every user of the app.

Answer 4

At my company we have enterprise installations ranging into the thousands of seats. If we implemented an auto-upgrade, our customers would mutiny!

Large installations have peculiar issues that don't apply to small ones. For example, with 2000 users (not all of whom are, let us say, the most sophisticated of tool users), tool-training is a big deal: training time, internal demos, internal process documents, etc.. They cannot unleash a new feature or UI change without a chance to understand how it fits in their process and therefore what their internal best practices are and how to communicate that to their users.

Also when applications fail, it's the internal IT team who are responsible. Therefore, they want time to install a new version in a test area, beat it up, and deploy on a Saturday only when they're good and ready.

I can see the value in making minor patches more easy to install, particularly when the patch is just for a bug-fix and not for anything that would require retraining, and if the admins still get final say over when it's installed. But even then, I don't believe anyone has ever asked for this! Whether because they don't want it or they are trained to not expect it, it doesn't seem worth it.