The Downsides of Software as Service 326
JustinBrock writes "Dvorak's article yesterday, entitled Don't Trust the Servers, argues that the danger of software as a service was highlighted when 'the WGA [Windows Genuine Advantage] server outage hit on Friday evening and was finally repaired on Saturday. It was down for 19 long hours.' The whole fiasco raises an interesting perspective on the software as a service 'fetish'. Dvorak highlights it hypothetically: What if the timeline were reversed, and we were moving from online apps to the desktop. Hear his prophecy of the marketing: 'You can image the advertising push. "Now control your own data!" "Faster processing power now." "Cheaper!" "Everything at your fingertips." "No need to worry about network outages." "Faster, cheaper, more reliable." On and on. I can almost hear the marketing types brag about how much better "shrink wrap" software is than the flaky online apps. The best line for the emergence of the desktop computer in a reverse timeline would be "It's about time!"'"
When is the last time Dvorak... (Score:5, Insightful)
That being said, (Score:2, Insightful)
Why not both? (Score:3, Insightful)
We'll have both, need both, but will still have a lot of cases where people try to the wrong one and get burnt.
Written without reading TFA (and boy, did it feel good!). I'll read it now.
This is cyclical in the computer industry (Score:5, Insightful)
Reasons for Service Software (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:When is the last time Dvorak... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Software as a service" should be viewed with the same suspicion as "Trusted Computing." Something so bundled in Marketing, with no particular benefits to the consumer, has to be a money/power grab.
That is what he does. (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, aside from the "discussion" part. It's all about the page hits.
Remember, the more page hits you get, the more important you are. And the more important you are, the more you can charge for advertising on your pages.
Right now the big guns are 100% behind "Software as a Service" (SaaS). Which is the same as being an "Application Service Provider" (ASP) used to be. Which is almost like "Web Apps" were. And so on and so forth.
The downsides of software NOT as a service (Score:3, Insightful)
At this point in time, software is as complicated and as important to some businesses as say, vehicles are. Only the very largest of companies have their own in-house garage and mechanics to take care of their own vehicles.
Re:When is the last time Dvorak... (Score:5, Insightful)
"This time." Centralization and decentralization has always been a pendulum sort of affair, varying with the relative costs of bandwidth, CPU, and storage.
Once upon a time, there was the mainframe. Nobody ever got fired for buying (or more accurately, leasing) IBM!
Then came the microcomputer. Decentralize! Applications run right on your desk! Buy Apple! No more monthly payments to IBM! (At 9600 baud, dumb terminal bandwidth is expensive. 8-bit micros are cheap!)
Then came the dickless workstation. Oops, "diskless". Centralize! It's a client/server world! Buy Oracle, and run it on your Sun! No more huge capital outlays for PCs that become obsolete the day they're purchased! (Workstations are expensive, but this new ethernet stuff is cheap!)
Then the PC-as-workstation. Decentralize! Don't rely on that expensive server! (Doesn't matter how much cable you run, if you have 100 users trying to render the Sistine Chapel on X Terminals, bandwidth and server-side processing power are shockingly expensive again, local storage and processing power are suddenly cheap again.)
We're currently on our way back to the server. This time, the excuse is DRM. An application that doesn't exist locally can never be used locally once the vendor decides to kill it.
But ultimately, the root cause is that bandwidth is relatively cheap again. Doesn't matter whether the application is Windows (which needs to call the mothership for patches every few days) or Steam (for the same reason).
Depends on the situation (Score:3, Insightful)
For Once I Agree with Dvorak (Score:4, Insightful)
SAAS has worse problems than server availability. It creates nasty integration problems since your critical enterprise data is not only crossing an interface, but the other side of that interface is not in your control. That's not just an integration problem: I'm waiting for a security breach against one of the big SAAS vendors. And not only is it closed-source, it's closed-source managed by a third party that doesn't have the same priorities that you have. So if you need to fix or customize anything on the SAAS side, you're well and truly screwed.
The only reason SAAS emerged at all was as a response to the poor performance of most in-house corporate IT departments. Why wait for your own geeks to implement something badly in a year when you can go to an ASP who will give it to you in a couple of months? And of course there are the perverse incentives in how capital expenditure is accounted for versus externalized services. But the main motivation is that business managers just don't trust their own IT people. And based on the performance of most IT management, no wonder.
Dvorak's Ignorance and WGA... (Score:4, Insightful)
The first one I got: WGA can't "fail closed", otherwise pirates would just filter the communication to the WGA servers.
Rather, what WGA needs is a signed "check back later" message, where Microsoft's public key is used to sign a "check back by day X" message, so that a server outage can be handled in the future. And I'd bet that there is, by next Patch Tuesday, an upgrade to WGA to support such functionality.
And its not like people's home/office computers are so reliable, making this segque ridiculous.
This time it's extra stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
With Vista, the user has to buy a computer that provides all the ressources and is still depending on some server being available / working correctly.
In this case the WGA server, which does not give any advantage to the user. The only one who has an advantage is Microsoft (from disallowing pirated Windows versions), and that is questionable as I doubt Vista will stay uncracked
Re:When is the last time Dvorak... (Score:2, Insightful)
So, you NEVER outsource work that needs to be done to an outside vendor? You fix your own car, repair your air conditioner, etc?
I do none of these. I have an insurance contract that I pay yearly for maintenance and repair of all my major household appliances that covers my A/C, stove, fridge, washer, water heater, and dryer. (sadly, dishwasher is not in the mix, I wish it was)
So what we have is a form of "Hardware as a Service". It's a big, complicated problem for me that's handled by the experts for a reasonable fee. And that's all that SaaS is. Vendors offer to take a big, nasty hairball of complexity and make it "go away" for a monthly fee.
And the quality of the decision really comes down to the quality of the vendor. Do they do backups regularly, off-site? Do they keep their server load down? Is their software well architected for security? Stability? Do they have high quality technicians? Programmers? Engineers? When you are experiencing a problem, do they pay attention? Are their prices in line with the services being rendered?
It's like picking a mechanic! If you have good answers to the above questions, SaaS can work very well. If you pick the wrong vendor, the result can be a torturous nightmare.
I can't give Dvorak much credit... (Score:3, Insightful)
for startling insights into marketing. (Ok, duh, this is John Dvorak, but still...)
Truly, marketing is designed to convince you that what they've got is much better than what you've got. If you have independent, localized computing, marketing will try to sell you distributed service-based computing. When you've had your fill of service-based computing, well, that's just an opportunity for marketing to sell you independent localized computing.
It's like samsara [wikipedia.org] except that the marketers consider the cycle of rebirth to be good. (They are marketers, after all; enlightenment means that they no longer have anything to sell you!)
I'd have to mod TFA "-1, Obvious".
Right tool for the job ... (Score:3, Insightful)
His points are good, and they underscore why I rarely use the latest web apps, but nevertheless am amused by them (Flash-based image editing online!). Still, while we should show his level of skepticism toward many of these apps, the fact is that network-based app delivery still has many advantages. The main one is that you can update software for all your users in one place, and not care as much about the state of the client machines. As a recent Mac convert you'd think Dvorak would particularly like this, since he can do the same things as a web client on a Mac as on Windows or Linux.
Despite the stupidity of some online apps, I can think of a lot of examples of software I would definitely rather have on the web - e-mail (think Gmail or other webmail, which almost everyone uses to some extent), a trouble ticketing system for a helpdesk, a custom database used within a company (most of these are centralized), etc. Onlime apps particularly make sense where the data is centralized as well. That's worth emphasizing: Google Docs and Spreadsheets may be nifty, as well as cheaper than MS Office, but they won't catch on until people see the value in storing the actual files centrally as well, just as they store e-mail centrally when using a service like Hotmail.
Re:When is the last time Dvorak... (Score:4, Insightful)
User's can't go in and break the system.
There is one system to maintain, one anti-virus package, one system to back up and so on.
All of the benefits you mention depend on all software running as a service, not just MS Office and a few other "enterprise" apps. That simply won't ever happen, even if everyone buys into this scam-of-a-revenue-model, because something absolutely critical won't play well with others.
You are not in control of your own destiny.
And it all comes down to that one point. Every other fact or opinion aside, what does it mean when Microsoft EOL'ing a product means you no longer have any program with which to review the last ten years' worth of customer transactions or tax records? "Sorry, you'll have to cancel that audit, Microsoft cut us off. But no doubt the IRS understands completely and trusts that we filed accurately, right?"
Re:When is the last time Dvorak... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's already here, in "Higher" Education (Score:4, Insightful)
The obvious problem arises when the network goes down,
But there are other "gotchas":
Again, I'm sure there are more that will come up as time goes on.
IMO, any time there's a move to vendor control, let alone remote, removed, vendor control, the end user will lose.
software as a service is successful (Score:3, Insightful)
Good webhosts have 99.99999% up time. The entire hosting industry measures success by uptime. If it didn't, the industry would collapse.
Dvorak attacks the WGA server that went down, rightfully so. However, he then goes into hyperbole mode and subtly lumps googles offerings in the same category. After using google.com for years, and google maps almost since it was launched, I can tell you I can remember only once significant outage, and it was some kind of DoS attack, I think, which was quickly dealt with. I can remember no minor outages in my experience, nor am I aware of any other outages reported in any major online media.
Yes, you have to be worried about losing your documents. The best ASPs should provide some kind of user data backup (I don't know if Google does this but if they don't they need to) or some kind of contractual obligation to users in case of data loss (more appropriate for Business to business apps). However, if someone provides you with excellent up time and reliability, why can't you trust them?
Microsoft has a lousy track record of reliability. Also, tying hundreds of ASP apps into a single WGA server is ludicrous.
Trust is about experience. Anyone using Microsoft based ASP apps is asking for trouble because the experience of most users is that MS is not reliable. If you want reliability, you need to look elsewhere, and there are plenty of options.
That's what this outage is really telling us. As usual, Dvorak has completely missed the point.
Dvorak's a little confused (Score:5, Insightful)
It isn't.
WGA is a service which Microsoft provides to themselves, in order to protect themselves from said Windows users (AKA thieves).
If the main purpose is to protect your profit center, a 19 hour (or 72, or 30 day) outtage where the failure mode is "more protection" strikes me as perfectly reasonable. It's not like "pissing off customers" has ever been considered a liability in Redmond.
Sucks to be a Windows user, though. Should have got some sort of service agreement, I guess.
c.
Here's a few more (Score:3, Insightful)
Forced patching (Score:2, Insightful)
Whether open source or closed source, once you find a bug, you have to assume the "bad guys" know as well.
At that point, you wonder about the guy who's on a fishing trip and has no idea his small business server can be randomly pwnt by a published exploit.
If a major blog software author found they had a crucial vulnerability in a software version shipped two version numbers ago, they would like to be able to update it before the bad guys found it.
That is what SaaS offers that desktop software doesn't. The exception is if a very simple runtime is created within a client environment, like a browser, which also makes the installations simpler and more uniform.
400 years of industrial history suggests that streamlining and creating uniformity increase reliability and profits.
Microsoft is wishing they had SaaS'd Windows in 1995, as all those creaky old machines running windows 98, 2000, and early versions of XP get pwnt by trojans run amuck.
Re:When is the last time Dvorak... (Score:3, Insightful)
Biggest upside: Your data is accessible anywhere, without an IT department and independent of TimeWarner or whatever cheap internet access you use. You don't have to pay for a rack at a datacenter. Your application is upgraded without you having to do anything or pay extra. It's basically someone else's problem; and an SaaS vendor is going to be far more invested in a HA infrastructure than you can afford to be (economies of scale and all) and as such, will be down less often on average than if you did it yourself (anecdotal evidence need not apply, I'm sure a lot of people have servers that haven't been down in 2+ years.)
Another big upside: No big up-front capital costs in deploying programs. Chances are, unless you're an implementation vendor, you're going to pay someone else to implement large open source projects for you (Zimbra, SugarCRM, etc; this is the hidden cost of open source.) Even if you do it yourself, there's an opportunity cost because you could have been making money when you were mucking with setting this crap up, and there will inevitably be issues somewhere down the line.
SaaS is not right for every company, but it does make a lot of sense for small companies.
One Word - Skype (Score:5, Insightful)
Software as a Service (SaaS) creates all sorts of ripe opportunities for hackers, crackers, and other cyber criminals. It's been a cottage industry to blackmail online casinos, threatening DDOS attacks if you're not paid off. Since a half-day DDOS could cost the casino in the high five figures (or more), they pay the blackmail.
What if a large SaaS company had a 100,000 business customers... just 100,000? That's a ripe DDOS blackmail target if I ever saw one. And if you could hack the systems and gain access to the tax and banking spreadsheets of 100,000 clients? Can you say "low-hanging fruit" boys and girls? I knew you could.
And what if the company is being run by idiots who fake their numbers to make it seem like a sinking ship is just "settling in the water" until the ship suddenly capsizes without warning, going belly-up in the space of hours. All your docs and spreadsheets are offline... indefinitely. And if by some graceful foresight, you backed up your docs, if you can't find a piece of software that can both run locally and work with the proprietary formats the SaaS vendor used for their docs, you're still SOL.
Those are worst case scenarios, but you get the drift.
SaaS is already a superior platform (Score:2, Insightful)
If you're judging SaaS by the performance of M$ or if your opinions are driven by sensational media coverage and highly visible outages like Skype then you're incapable of sound judgment.
There have been constant small and spectacular meltdowns by IS shops all over the planet but they don't get noticed by the press. I'd much rather trust my stuff to the grid and the "Googleplex" than the average IT shop. It's like more people are killed by lightning than by tsunamis, tornadoes, hurricanes, volcanoes, and earthquakes but the most attention goes to the latest big disaster.
The collective stability of the net/grid and Google's 500,000+ servers are going to bring irresistible disruptive change. Those who do not adjust to this trend will become extinct relics. Why buy a CD when you can just tap the grid for an MP3? Why make a trip to the store to get a DVD when you can just download it from the net in seconds? Why go to the movie theatre when you can just watch it on your own home theatre which has better quality video and audio? Why bother with installing and constantly upgrading software when you can just use it on the Net? Why worry about backups when Google makes it routine and does it for you so you don't even have to think about it? It's appalling that so many people lack vision and are blinded by the here and now.
My daughter is kind of a space cadet and is rarely bothered by small details like backing up her files containing her thesis. I'm more comfortable with Google storage than her laptop file "management."
Re:When is the last time Dvorak... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:When is the last time Dvorak... (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree completely. Unfortunately, the industry is trying to move BACK in that direction and it is not a good thing. Which was the point of the article.
Re:When is the last time Dvorak... (Score:4, Insightful)
I can see why it is a good idea to remove critical applications from the control of the end user, but the drop in performance does not justify the increased level of maintainability. And no matter how much we hate it, there are some applications that are required to have some or all of it run at a centralized location. Examples would be your Exchange server, your database server and any web based applications that simply can not be run on local PC's.
Re:Here's a few more - readable this time... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not a big fan of Microsoft but this service (intially, until they have a lot of people signed up then they can tighten the screws) could save a small business a lot of money. For $40 a month you get a domain name, tools for building a site, 20GB of bandwidth a month, 2GB of storage space for your website, 50 email addresses with 2GB of storage a piece as well as some basic business apps, contact management, project management etc.
And zero servers to maintain, backup, or purchase.
For a small business that is HUGE.
If the business takes off they will out grow it, but if it doesn't it won't take years to pay off the loans they took out to buy hardware.
In house hardware and software is definitely a valuable asset for a lot of companies, but for someone running a mail order doll furniture business, software as a service might be just the ticket (though they might want to look at the free level of Office Live).
Actually I encourage everyone to make Microsoft pay for a free domain for a year by using the Office Live Basic service
Re:When is the last time Dvorak... (Score:3, Insightful)
Now we are seeing centralization of a different sort, where the mainframes and admins don't even reside in your organization. No thanks!
Re:Here's a few more - readable this time... (Score:5, Insightful)
If I buy a copy of Office today, I know that I can always get access to the files I create with it. Even if it's a hassle--having to reinstall every X days because their product activation server was dismantled years ago--I can always do it. Can the same be said of Google Apps? Of whatever Microsoft offering you're discussing? In 10 years, if I need access to my financial documents, will they still be around? Maybe, maybe not, but it's a pretty huge uncertainty right now. And that's the rub--that's the thing that, if left unaddressed, will prevent me from ever subscribing to software-as-a-service for anything important.
Re:Reasons for Service Software (Score:3, Insightful)
I've noticed it personally, as I'm a shareware author of an image publishing package. The software has gotten better and better but the sales have slowly been drying up. After second guessing my marketing, pricing, and a host of other things, I came to a conclusion.
Few home users want to publish their own photos to their own web site any longer. In fact, look at most individual's personal web sites. They are no longer hand made HTML. They're either simply a blog, or a myspace/myspace equivalent page. Even a lot of up and coming musicians don't even have dedicated web sites any longer. They just publish the URL for their myspace page.
Same is happening with photos. People would rather just have Shutterfly or Google or a host of others host their photos.
In some ways I guess this is good. It has opened things up for the general users a lot more. In some ways it is bad though. I'm probably an exception, but I have around 15,000 photos in my web gallery. I've spent a lot of time organizing the photos and adding captions, etc. I have the availability to view the originals as well. In fact this isn't just a "web gallery", but HTML that I can burn on a CD and put away and open it in 20 years. Of course, this assumes we'll have browsers in 20 years and JPEG and HTML will be understood. I, for one, doubt we'll have a problem here. There is so much content in these formats that at a minimum, there will be an OSS alternative for viewing them.
Say I had invested all that time into a Picasa or Shutterfly album. What would I have? A bunch of time and data locked up in someone else's system. What are the chances I'll be able to share all this creative content with my kids in 20 years?
I guess I'm old school, but it is sad to see desktop applications slowly dying off. I've been writing desktop applications every since the days of the TRS-80. I've also built web applications, but typically not the type that would replace a desktop client. I've still use some of the same apps I was using back in 2000. I wonder if I would be lucky enough to have such a long run with software running as a service.
Call me old school again, but I'm not a fan of "renting" music. In many cases I still find that the best deal is buying a CD at Best Buy for 10 or 12 bucks and ripping it to whatever quality I like. I'll have this music for a lifetime, for a one time fee.
Re:Here's a few more - readable this time... (Score:2, Insightful)
Software as a service is a service like any other, you always check their work and have an alternate plan in case they close up shop.