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Zimbra, a provider of hosted collaborative applications, announced that it will be adding some offline capabilities to its Ajax-based office suite. 

Zimbra's applications are in the same category as Google Docs & Spreadsheets and Google Calendar, Zoho, Preezo and a host of other online would-be Microsoft Office competitors.  The SaaS concept and the collaborative capabilities of an online office suite are appealing.  But the downside is that most of us still are not connected 24x7. 

Many of the hosted applications seem to believe that offline access is anathema to their business model.  When I began to use SalesForce.com, my greatest frustration was that I had no offline access.  A plane trip following a week's worth of sales calls is the perfect time to enter all those detailed contact notes.  But not for Salesforce users; not with their "no software" logo.

Zimbra, along with soon-to-launch Scrybe (see TechCrunch post from October), seem to understand that (at least limited) offline capabilities are a must-have in order to gain any meaningful level of adoption.  Zimbra's goal is for users to have the same experience whether online or offline, supported by synchronization of any work performed offline.  That will include use of calendars and contacts lists, as well as documents.  The announcement first came at O'Reilly's Web 2.0 conference last week.

Down the road, we will reach a point when connectivity can be taken for granted, even in planes, trains and automobiles.  In the near-term, adoption of hosted solutions will be higher for those providers who provide a bridge to the offline world.

For more on Zimbra's announcement, take a look at the Zimbra blog and O'Reilly Radar.