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A look at the volatile history of remote computing and online software services.
One oF THe mercial opportunities these days appears to be software as a service or SaaS. In this form of computing, a cus-more hyped com-
tomer runs software remotely, via the Internet, using the service provider’s programs and computer infrastructure. One of the first and most success-
ful firms in the SaaS space is Salesforce. com, which was launched in 1999. Salesforce.com provides a customer-relationship management service. Using the service, a mobile salesperson, for example, can access the software from a laptop while on the road, and the head office is relieved of all the problems of infrastructure provision,
Salesforce marketing campaign.
the complexities of managing and upgrading software, and synchronizing data from multiple sources. Another big player is Google, which now offers email and office productivity applications in its version of cloud computing.
Many people think that the future of software lies in SaaS and cloud computing. They may well be right in the medium term, but history shows that one cannot be sure that the trend will last indefinitely.
There are two main components to SaaS: The software itself and the computing infrastructure on which it runs. Customers are at least as concerned about the quality of service as they are about the software. Indeed, for providers who use freely available open source software, quality of service is their only competitive advantage.
Organizations use in-house computing facilities or SaaS largely according to the economics of the situation— whether it is cheaper to own one’s software and infrastructure or to buy services on-demand. This dilemma is not new. It is as old—indeed, older— than the computer industry itself.
Before computers came on the scene in the mid-1950s, the most advanced information processing equipment that organizations could buy (or lease) was punched-card electric accounting machines, or EAMs. The main vendor of this type of equipment, IBM, opened the first of several service bureaus in 1932. Customers brought their data processing needs to a bureau and came
photograph by linda lane
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