Software as service
I read many articles pointing to the new wave of software applications offered as "services" on the web; Instead of buying and installing a piece of software on your machine, you rent a service that does the same thing for you over the internet; Its like using electricity and gas; use as much as you want and then pay up; except that software is not an "exhaustive" resource like gas, and need not be "regenerated" (although it has to "upgraded" regularly);
When I read about companies like salesforce.com it reminds me of the idea behind the "Multics" operating system that was planned by IBM, Bell labs and GE but never took shape (instead, we have today a popular OS called Unix that implemented many ideas planned in Multics). Multics infact extended this whole idea of rent and use to all computing that you will ever need to do; The idea is that users would rent some computing time, do whatever work they need to get done and then logoff; you will be charged for the time you spent doing computation on multics; Infact, the early "Mainframe" computers implemented the same concept;
I thought about the pros and cons of computing as a service...
advantages:
1. You dont have to own a computer; just a sumb terminal would do; hook up to any one of the good services in town and you are suddenly working on a computer; (its like cable TV)
2. No hassles of installing and maintaing your software (including OS). So no need to buy individual copies of your own collection of software; (Again think of how cable TV works; you dont pay for each channel; the cable company pays for each channel and distributes it; overall, it is a win-win situation for the customer and the operator)
3. You will have a choice of platforms; you can prefer to work on a sophisticated when you are doing business and then switch to a less powerfull one when you are just at home watching a movie / browsing the web etc. Everyone can tailor their account to suit their needs;
4. Enormous power - A lot of computing power can be put in your hands without actually paying to buy that kind of a computer (or even leasing out a super computer for a month); Say you just want good power for a week or a month, you can step up your account and get the power you need; later step it down.
5. If you are a corporate company, probabaly you can buy a central computer to which all your users can hook on; (Think of your own power plant to generate power for your enterprise).
Disadvantages:
1. Makes you dependent on what the computing company provides; Taking the cable TV analogy again, if you want to watch a channel thats not provided by your operator. But software can be customized to your needs; still it needs to be verified how much customization can a generic computing services company can provide for you without burning your ass given the range of hardware platforms and things-to-do.
2. Privacy?? what about privacy?! The computing services company can track what you've doing; thats scary to many.
3. The idea of a "Personal computer" brings with it many emotions and feelings that are really strong given human nature of distrustfulness; that is why the PC became an instant hit. Microsoft realized this way back; so they brought out cheap "personal" computing to everybody; and they made good money.
In the old days big fat Mainframe computers provided centralized computing services to everybody in the neighbourhood; Then the PC wave struck; The trend is going back towards centralized services; only now, the platform is the internet; so the grand illusion is that you get to keep your "personal" computing, but then also access computing services via the world wide web. What does that mean? it means you can compose your e-mail online, you can compose your business proposals on an online word processor (and probably store it on the service provider's website so that it would be accessable to you anytime anywhere), and do all your computing by logging on to another computer;
People are talking about the new wave of web-service based software like salesforce.com; while there are big advantages to this model, think about the 3 points in the disadvantages section above? do they still apply?
When I read about companies like salesforce.com it reminds me of the idea behind the "Multics" operating system that was planned by IBM, Bell labs and GE but never took shape (instead, we have today a popular OS called Unix that implemented many ideas planned in Multics). Multics infact extended this whole idea of rent and use to all computing that you will ever need to do; The idea is that users would rent some computing time, do whatever work they need to get done and then logoff; you will be charged for the time you spent doing computation on multics; Infact, the early "Mainframe" computers implemented the same concept;
I thought about the pros and cons of computing as a service...
advantages:
1. You dont have to own a computer; just a sumb terminal would do; hook up to any one of the good services in town and you are suddenly working on a computer; (its like cable TV)
2. No hassles of installing and maintaing your software (including OS). So no need to buy individual copies of your own collection of software; (Again think of how cable TV works; you dont pay for each channel; the cable company pays for each channel and distributes it; overall, it is a win-win situation for the customer and the operator)
3. You will have a choice of platforms; you can prefer to work on a sophisticated when you are doing business and then switch to a less powerfull one when you are just at home watching a movie / browsing the web etc. Everyone can tailor their account to suit their needs;
4. Enormous power - A lot of computing power can be put in your hands without actually paying to buy that kind of a computer (or even leasing out a super computer for a month); Say you just want good power for a week or a month, you can step up your account and get the power you need; later step it down.
5. If you are a corporate company, probabaly you can buy a central computer to which all your users can hook on; (Think of your own power plant to generate power for your enterprise).
Disadvantages:
1. Makes you dependent on what the computing company provides; Taking the cable TV analogy again, if you want to watch a channel thats not provided by your operator. But software can be customized to your needs; still it needs to be verified how much customization can a generic computing services company can provide for you without burning your ass given the range of hardware platforms and things-to-do.
2. Privacy?? what about privacy?! The computing services company can track what you've doing; thats scary to many.
3. The idea of a "Personal computer" brings with it many emotions and feelings that are really strong given human nature of distrustfulness; that is why the PC became an instant hit. Microsoft realized this way back; so they brought out cheap "personal" computing to everybody; and they made good money.
In the old days big fat Mainframe computers provided centralized computing services to everybody in the neighbourhood; Then the PC wave struck; The trend is going back towards centralized services; only now, the platform is the internet; so the grand illusion is that you get to keep your "personal" computing, but then also access computing services via the world wide web. What does that mean? it means you can compose your e-mail online, you can compose your business proposals on an online word processor (and probably store it on the service provider's website so that it would be accessable to you anytime anywhere), and do all your computing by logging on to another computer;
People are talking about the new wave of web-service based software like salesforce.com; while there are big advantages to this model, think about the 3 points in the disadvantages section above? do they still apply?
posted by Satya at 3:40 PM
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