Business software vendors impressed with Chrome's faster JavaScript

SaaS providers NetSuite and NETTime Solutions are already claiming that their applications operate more quickly with Google's Chrome than with any other browser. Will larger applications vendors start optimizing for Chrome soon, too?

Within the first week of its existence, Google's new Chrome browser has drawn official support from NetSuite and several other business software-as-a-service (SaaS) vendors, with some declaring that their applications run better with Chrome than with Internet Explorer or Firefox.

As previously reported in BetaNews, even though Chrome is still in beta, the new browser from Google is already proving popular with end users, particularly as measured by Web sites attracting technical and early adopter audiences.

NetSuite, provider of an SaaS-based enterprise resource planning suite, announced on Friday "native support" for Chrome, predicting in a statement that end users of its CRM, accounting, and e-commerce applications will experience performance and speed improvements for AJAX-powered features such as eXtreme list editing, type-ahead lookups, rich text editing, drag-and-drop and quick-add portlets.

The ERP software vendor also announced that its OpenAir subsidiary, which provides professional services automation software, has already found Chrome to offer speed improvements versus other browsers in areas such as managing project tasks and assigning project resources. NetSuite and OpenAir also support IE, Firefox, and Safari.

Also on Friday, NETTime Solutions announced that its SaaS time-and-attendance sofware for SMBs is now "100% certified for use on Chrome," with internal tests demonstrating 12% rendering improvements over IE and 23% speed gains over Firefox.

On Thursday, EnterpriseWizard Inc. announced that the Autumn 2008 release of its Adaptive CRM SaaS software will introduce Chrome support along with a number of other new features, including support for databases with over 100 million records.

Although some other SaaS vendors might prefer to wait until Google gets a chance to iron out any initial bugs during the beta stage, signs are also in the air that additional support from some larger SaaS vendors could be on the way soon.

For instance, in June of this year -- some three months prior to Chrome's release -- Google partner Salesforce.com sketched out plans to drop support for Microsoft's IE6 in "next-generation user interface enhancements," set for release later this year.

"This does not mean you could not use IE6 with Salesforce. However, it would mean that you would not have access to UI enhancements unless you upgraded to IE7 or switched to another supported browser like Firefox or Safari," Salesforce.com's Jerry Sherman wrote in a blog post.

Between August 2007 and June 2008, browser usage with Salesforce.com changed markedly according to Sherman, with IE6 losing 14 percentage points from its previous browser share of 65.5%.

Meanwhile, "IE7 usage has grown to around one-third of all users [and] Firefox 2.0 usage has increased dramatically, to 14% of all users," Sherman said.

Two months before that blog post, Google had begun to bundle Salesforce.com CRM with its online application suite.