Co-founder of Alpha Software, Richard Rabins focuses on strategy, sales, and marketing. Richard also served as CEO of SoftQuad International from 1997 to 2001, when it owned Alpha. In addition to his 30 years with the company, Richard played a key role as co-founder, and served as president and chairman of the Massachusetts Software Council (now the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council), the largest technology trade organization in Massachusetts. Prior to founding Alpha, Richard was a project leader and consultant with Information Resources, Inc. (IRI), and a management consultant with Management Decision Systems, Inc. Richard holds a master's degree in system dynamics from the Sloan School at MIT, and a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and master's degree in control engineering from University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. He has served on the boards of Silent Systems, Legacy Technology and O3B Networks, and is co-founder of Tubifi www.tubifi.com.
When we first were working on all the mobile capabilities in Alpha Anywhere, we thought that Offline Support and the associated intelligent conflict resolution was important, but we soon realized that was more than that, it was critical. Employees in the field have limited to no connectivity, requiring that the apps built for their jobs offer offline access. Apps that don't work offline limit where your workforce can use the apps. This was brought home by both customers and also by VDC research when they published this chart based on research with enterprises who were deploying real applications 
This was the motivation for us to seriously focus on making it quick and easy for Alpha Anywhere to build offline mobile apps with flexible conflict resolution. What has become increasingly clear to us is that offline support with flexible conflict resolution is critical for three important reasons: Availability. Being able to work anywhere without having to worry about no existent or weak or intermittent WIFI or Cellular Coverage. Performance. Eliminating server round-trips can have a material effect on performance and therefore user acceptance of a mobile app. Cost. Not having to pay for data plans for field workers can amount to significant savings. (For example a field force of 500 people who other wise might need a $50/mo data plan, would result in annual savings of $300,000) For more on offline support that is built into Alpha Anywhere - please click here
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