The Sleeter Group has an interesting article on IPP and QuickBooks.

From the article:

“Intuit has invested in cloud computing in a STRONG way, by creating the IPP Platform.  Loosely modeled after the Salesforce.com developer cloud implementation, the IPP platform provides a simple and easy mechanism for developers to create- and sell – internet applications that interface directly with QuickBooks.

The IPP platform contains tools for database creation, programming, billing, usage metering, licensing procurement,  security mechanisms, and even creates a listing for the product that can be accessed directly from within QuickBooks.  In the desktop world, this would be paramount to nirvana.

I have sat in several roadmap meetings, and my first notion is that they have learned from their experiences in the SDK implementation, and have provided a top notch environment for developers create a sellable application in a short timeline.  In fact, using the IPP platform and tools, a developer can bring an application to market in weeks, instead of months.

As good as the SDK was for creating rules for importing data into QuickBooks, it was still left to the developer as to how error checking was assessed BEFORE attempting to import data.  A good example of this was duplicate invoice numbers,  duplicate customers,  or duplicate sales transactions.  Smart developers would query the QuickBooks data to ensure that duplicates would not exist; but not all developers followed this method – or even knew how to.

My friend and Intuit colleague Peter Vogel created a great tool called ” the web connector” which is the current standard for importing data into QuickBooks from shopping carts or online applications, but again, unless the developer brings the QuickBooks data from the desktop into the shopping cart database to check for duplicates, you would have to periodically check your QB data.

The IPP overcomes this limitation, because all of your QuickBooks data is brought up into the cloud by default – and all error checking, and data synchronization, is done IN THE CLOUD.  I personally welcome this improvement, and I strongly applaud the Intuit implementation of this process.”

Since there has been such a big IPP push for about a year, and these applications are supposedly able to be brought to market in weeks instead of months, one might have cognitive dissonance  with the fact that there are so few IPP apps integrated with QuickBooks.

And it seems to me a bit of an overstatement to say that SDK’s limitation on error-checking has been overcome by IPP.

One area not addressed — data collision — the fact that based upon how often the IPP app syncs with the desktop version of QuickBooks, that data may no longer be valid, and that QuickBooks overrides all such occurrences.