I recently read a blog posting by Don Fornes titled “The Software as a Service Dilemma” at http://www.softwareadvice.com/articles/uncategorized/the-software-as-a-service-dilemma-104071/. Don has made some very interesting obsverations (not all that I agree with), however they provide a lot of insights into your thought process behind SaaS based software.
I think it is interesting to point out that a lot of traditional web applications can really be classified as SaaS applications; even though you might never think of them that way. Let’s take monster.com as an example. In the last several years, you have probably not heard of monster.com as a SaaS application. However, think about it. Why can’t a system like monster.com be classified as SaaS?
1. It is multi-tenant – multiple enterprises (job posters) and people like you and me (job seekers) use the same platform, over the web (browser based)
2. We don’t have to worry about upgrades etc and thus are not tied to their release cycles
3. We use subscription pricing (per job posting or per month etc)
4. The business can buy these services directly; without really involving an IT department
So think about it – monster.com clearly meets the basic definitions of SaaS. While using monster or other web applications for any domain – enterprises typically do not raise the same security and privacy concerns when they consider typical SaaS software.
So in this case; is this just a marketing exercise? If you agree with my line of argument, clearly we have been building “SaaS” software since the advent of web application programming – just not marketing it as such.
The same kinda happened with Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). The buzz words and sales pitches came on very strong – and parallels for SOA could be drawn to almost a decade before the word was coined. Now, since almost everyone agrees “SOA” as a buzz word is dead – the concepts, architectures and design patterns for SOA based software carry on. Thus is SaaS just another buzz word that is poised to die at some point – but the concepts carrying on for a long long time… ?
