[dragonwriter]

> These days, rather than dealing with that mess, many companies just go for an off-the-shelf hosted solution that sort of fits their needs, such as Basecamp, or Jira, or Igloo. The existence of these products is a sign that we've gone off in the wrong direction somewhere

No, its a sign that the web has enabled easier application delivery with greater reach at lower cost; Access is still around, after all, and most businesses have it right at hand, so if the alternatives were worse, they'd still be using it.

[mistermann]

Unless they are getting advice from developers. Do you know any developers who would say "why don't you just use Access, it will take a week" when the alternative is a fun new 3 month web based project where they get to choose and try out the latest languages and frameworks? I certainly don't.