V.S.Babu points to MSDN: Northwind Unplugged: Building a Semi-Connected Application in Visual Basic .NET, and says: "One reason why I think Groove is such a great tool is that it supports this way of functioning. You are not grounded if you don’t have network connectivity".

The MSDN article (by these guys) is interesting, in that it's hard to build software like this; building a semi-connected application of any scale, even using technology-du-jour (Indigo?), is incredibly difficult. Geometrically complicated if you have different systems involved.

So the article's conclusion is nice:

Users, more and more, are expecting applications to work well in semi-connected environments. This is the result of a number of converging factors. First, laptop sales have now exceeded desktop sales. This means that users are mobile. Also, most new laptops now include 802.11 wireless cards as standard equipment. So, users are not only mobile, they come and go through areas of connectivity. Laptops let users get to a location and set up shop, but new devices are emerging that are literally designed to let the user work on the move. In fact, a major advantage of a Tablet PC is that it can be used while standing or walking.

Users are also being shown the light. Applications like Outlook 2003 work great in semi-connected environments, and do not require the user to manually switch between online and offline mode. Applications like Groove were architected from the start to be semi-connected.

As the decision makers in organizations are exposed to good examples of semi-connected applications, and as the semi-connected hardware (laptops, Tablet PCs, and so on) becomes ubiquitous, it's only a matter of time before decision makers demand that their applications work this way.