I am posting this in case somebody else sees this issue and is looking for a workaround.
Problem:
The Eos/Ion offline/client software would launch when my laptop was hooked up to my docking station at work. However, any attempt to launch the application when undocked failed. The client would show the splash screen but go no further.
Solution:
At first I thought it might be related to the displays. At work. the docking station is configured to support an extended desktop with multiple monitors. I was mistaken.
The actual problem was being disconnected from the corporate network. The network drives were unreachable. Unmapping the network drives resolved the issue.
To unmap a network share you can either right-click on "My Computer" and select "Disconnect Network Drive", or do as I did and write a small batch script to map/unmap drives.