What Upshot Online is all about is being simple, fast and affordable. I don't think any of the other solutions is putting a premium on these things. The SFA application was initially launched as a retail product a year ago. But the company planned to put the product online from a very early stage and now expects most of its business to come through this medium. The Online product supports disconnected working in Microsoft Outlook and on Palm Computing and Windows CE mobile devices.
Mobile workers can store to-do lists, appointments, contacts and other information offline.
The data is resynchronised on reconnection. Data is stored on a Unix backend, while the application layer is built in the COM component architecture and runs on Windows NT servers. Individual investors include Informix CEO Bob Finocchio, Intuit co-founder Tom Proulx and Compaq chairman Ben Rosen.