A Little SaaS
Posted on January 15, 2008
Filed Under Business Computing, Software, Windows |
The Internet really is changing the way we do just about everything. Don’t ask me why but some days ago I had a hankering for hummus (a chick pea spread for those unaccustomed) and it was a breeze to find a recipe online.
In fact it was so easy that allrecipes.com let me create an account, save whatever recipes I thought were interesting to my own recipe box, print on a full page, index card, whatever, and find just about any recipe imaginable by ingredient, meal, cooking method, prep time, anything I could imagine. Wow, thought I, why would anyone need a cookbook?
But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. We’ve touched on Web 2.0 in this column before and I’ve carried on about how the Internet has made everything wonderful and even made some things that were disturbing before even more disturbing. We’ve even looked at Content Management Systems and how they’re changing everyday web sites.
There once was a distinct line between end user software and the web. A web browser like Internet Explorer or Firefox let you search for information and look at web sites. There have been bells and whistles added to the browsers themselves that make them do some neat things but in years past, searching and looking at web sites were what browsers did.
Of course there forms that someone could fill in have been around almost since the web first came into being. What’s new however are the strides Software as a Service (SaaS) is making. SaaS isn’t web based but rather a method of supplying regular software over the Internet.
There has been online software for a number of years now and Google has made headlines in its attempt to dominate Microsoft’s Office software with its own online version. Google’s offering includes a word processor, spreadsheet, and a presentation package. The package is pretty slick but it is web based and is not as mature as Microsoft Office.
Microsoft on the other hand has taken notice and is actively promoting alternate licensing for its software and has adopted the SaaS model. Not exactly a web based software delivery system; SaaS is more a method of delivering software in way that avoids high initial licensing costs and rather licenses it on a monthly subscription basis.
In Microsoft’s incarnation of SaaS, there are a number of ways software can be licensed but essentially the end user never actually owns the software, he or she “rents” it or uses it on a subscription basis. The software is “hosted” and managed by a Service Provider who is responsible for ensuring compliance with the licensing terms and for reporting license usage to Microsoft on a monthly basis.
While this model may not be up everyone’s alley, it opens the door to small organizations being able to realistically make use of high end software products that were previously out of their reach. For example, many small organizations could benefit greatly from collaboration products like Microsoft Exchange or SharePoint Server but the cost of installing and licensing a server to run them can kill the deal.
Take for example a small business with 2 employees who share all of the duties of running the business. Both Jane and Joe keep their appointments in their Outlook calendars and keep track of tasks in their Outlook task list. Often one will need to know where the other will be at a particular time in order to schedule an appointment with a prospective client, supplier, or possibly even the bank.
Jane and Joe subscribe to a hosted Microsoft Exchange service and now they are able to see each other’s calendars, make changes to them, and even share tasks and email.
Better yet, they find that they could sync the calendars and task lists and send and receive email on their handheld devices over the air without ever having to plug the device into its cradle.
SaaS has the potential to even the slate for small business owners with limited resources and may just be the hottest thing to come out of Redmond in 2008.
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