>>>FoxInCloud provides the same application support on desktop and Web, and the possibility for additional HTML/CSS/JS features for those who want that.
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>I understand that, and it's impressive. But for the user at the end using the app: apart from decoration, how does the app allow the customer to deliver service better than in the Win95 days? How has the customer been able to transform its own service delivery because of the cool IT?
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>I can give you one example: my US bank allows me to photograph checks with a device to deposit the $, which you'll understand matters a lot to somebody who wanders outside the US. ;-) For years I had to mail the checks, but now the bank has this wonderful technology. But here's what I'm asking: why is a check sent to me in the first place? Why isn't it simply deposited electronically, as it would be in France? We don't want to be too impressed by technology that locks in old ways of doing things. This is where IT is stuck today, focused on old ways of doing things in a different packet.

It was not until the first serious error that I discovered how "scheduled electronic payment" works in the US. For a couple of years before that I was paying my utilities through the bank's web portal, scheduling them just a couple of days before the due date. Then I got some warning to allow for a few days "for the check to clear", whatever that meant. Then it happened - I scheduled a payment to four days before due date, and yet the utility company claimed I was two days overdue. The date on my bank statement was as scheduled, on their it was six days later. After seven months of back and forth the bank didn't exactly confess the error, they just told me to pay the fines (which accumulated to $65 on a $12 bill) and they invented the same amount on my account.

Which settled the matter but I still didn't understand how can electronic payment take six days. I guessed the bank did them in batches and a batch slipped somehow. It remained a mystery until I once switched payments (water vs sewer) which went to different accounts of the same company. They sent me back my check. I didn't write a check... hm, what's this? Then I took a closer look: the "electronic payment" was, well, a physical check, in one of those envelopes with a window or those print-through ones, printed in my name, off my account, sent via snail mail. True, it was printed from a computer, on an electronic (!) printer.

Who knows how many allegedly automatic processes are actually built around manual processes and didn't go all the way through.