<Communicator supports OLE, so all those live links you spoke about are supported in Communicator, no? I've been updating Excel workbooks with live quote data for a long while, and I know Lotus has OLE capability, too. That's really nothing new.>
OLE, in its current implementaion, will not support live updating from the information you recieve from the web without quite a bit of tweaking. At least I can't do it easily. Eventhough I am not a competant programmer, neither are most of the potential users of these products. The delayed equity, debt and currency quotes (or any other type of dynamic info such as live news feeds) you find for free on PC Quote and the other services should theoretically be able to be linked to a spreadsheet, database or wordprocessing file on the desktop. It can't be done with the incumbent incarnation of Office. The new generation of office suites offer this capability. For the enterprise, the intranet would be the arena in question, but the same problem applies. If data was broadcast that was easily updatable and not based on a proprietary link, such as the data from the internet, a significant advantage could be had with the new office products.
When you arrange for OLE to do real time connections for calculation, you are probably relying on an expensive proprietary connection (such as a satelite link, coaxial cable, of FM band receiver - the big data vendors such as Bloomberg, Dow Jones and Telerate make a fortune this way). Data broadcast over the Intranet/Internet would be of a magnitude less expensive and much more pervasive and accessible throughout the enterprise and the globe. Imagine how much less money it costs to run a server than it is to launch and maintain an orbiting satellite. The next problem to conquer would be that of reliability, but this should only manifest itself on the internet, the intranet usually boasts a much higher bandwith. |
