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!"'"
Re:When is the last time Dvorak... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:When is the last time Dvorak... (Score:5, Interesting)
The upside to the customer is not so easy to find, unless you consider the possibility that with all this hypothetical easy money flowing in, Microsoft would be able to make a better product.
There are Many Busses (Score:4, Interesting)
Even if you are off the internet at large, we are getting into an age where a personal area network will become ubiquitous. Served-software would still be available from, say, your phone as the server (always keep the gears software on your phone ready for load) or maybe your bluetooth watch could maintain local copies of frequently used software.
While at some remote location you might be lucky to find that a colleague has a local copy of a certain, rarely used software on their wristwatch.
Then again, it is something to think about that within 20 years will it be as unusual to find oneself without internet access as it is to find oneself without electricity...perhaps it will be even more unusual than that (what with satellite communication).
Just thoughts.
It is interesting to note how much more bandwidth my internet connection has as compared to my first computer's bus speed.
Re:When is the last time Dvorak... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:When is the last time Dvorak... (Score:5, Interesting)
Software as a service can be run locally by a company, rather than on the web. There are several (provided the server is maintained on site).
Single point of failure should a catastrophe happen.
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.
Files are much easier to share and keep updated. It is a nightmare to have a single spreadsheet that is updated by several people when they are updated on the own personal systems.
When the server is remote, there are still advantages, just not as many:
My step-dad uses quickbooks for his small business. He has architects and accountants that need access to the books. Originally, he had purchased a copy for each of them to run on their personal computers. Unfortunately, when one made a change, he had to call everyone else to tell them, or email a backup copy of the DB and everyone would have to manually update their own DB's. It was a nightmare and this was only with four or five employees. With Quickbooks Online, each user logs into the website, enters their data and everything is updated almost in real time. He's a roofer and does not have the knowledge, nor the time to keep up with the application. He only cares about the reports, not how they are created. This works very well for him.
However, with all these advantages, I agree that it sux for the most part.
It's slow... much slower than running apps locally.
In the event of a failure, you're at the mercy of the tech folks that you do not employ and have not control over.
You are not in control of your own destiny.
Re:When is the last time Dvorak... (Score:5, Interesting)
1) Software provider has an 'incentive' to ensure the product is bug free or that the bugs get fixed quickly. With shrink-wrap software, they have your money and are providing fixes for free.
2) This is an accounting style advantage. Say, you have the option to pay $300 for a software suite up front, or $5/month for as long as you use it. Most of us would go with the $300. Except, what if the $5 gives you free upgrades forever? Now, what if it was $1.50/month? Here we start getting into a grayer area about it being cheaper to pay per month than up front, due to about how much money you could make off of the base cost in interest on investments.
Re:When is the last time Dvorak... (Score:1, Interesting)
In disaster recovery planning, a server room can be considered a single point of failure. RAID or no RAID, a broken sprinkler head can spew enough water to take down the whole thing. Although anything (even a roomful of servers) can have all kinds of failover redundancy, the technology is far from infallible. Until the great WGA meltdown came along, I'm sure MS would be willing to tell us how their configuration was nearly indestructible.
The problem is only going to get worse because the speed of very short connections is so much faster than the speed of WAN. Back in ancient times, SCSI was 5 Mbytes/sec., Ethernet was 10 megabits, T-1 was (and still is) 1.5 megabits. Today, SCSI is 640 Mbytes/sec. (128x faster), Ethernet is 1000 megabits (100x faster), and a T-3 is 45 megabits (only 30x faster). WAN is failing to keep up with the increasing amount of data and speed of local transfer.
Re:When is the last time Dvorak... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Here's a few more - readable this time... (Score:3, Interesting)
Compare a CRM system from Salesforce.com versus on-premise Seibel for example. Big big difference in price.
if you are talking about inhouse, intra-net apps, for security reasons, the only way you should be able to access it from outside the network is through VPN
Again, think about a CRM app. Do you want your top sales guy or exec to have to mess with getting through the VPN from his home computer? Or futzing around with some hotel's internet connection? Or from Starbucks? etc etc etc.
Service software - my experience (Score:1, Interesting)
The experience - far from perfect, sporadic problems, slow (compared to local execution) and a dangerous reliance singular structure. If the central copy goes down (which it has done 3 or 4 times for 6+ hours in the past year) then it is shut up shop at work. Myself and a few colleagues who rely on it basically can do nothing - and indeed on a couple of occasions we have knocked off and gone home at 2pm because there is basically zilch for us to do.
Whether a local service structure or an internet wide distribution structure - a reliance on that setup is risky - and while there are arguments about advantages (above and beyond the nefarious reasons MS want it) of all my software I have installed (what, 20-50 installed programs) none of them require daily/monthly patching or anything that remote supply can do better. In terms of patching and security the OS is the one that requires it most. How many of us desperately need to "patch" winrar once a month? (or frankly even office).
Re:When is the last time Dvorak... (Score:2, Interesting)
The thing about e-mail out-sourcing, is, that's kind of "service as a service". It works, e-mail already is a service, so it doesn't really matter where it is served. Assuming you've got acceptable bandwidth and latency levels, and a good caching IMAP client can make being on the wrong side of a pretty horrible link fairly tolerable.
Heck, the IMAP client on my Palm T5 using a weak WiFi signal at a motel and talking SSL to my home server via ADSL is very tolerable. (And the A in ADSL means "getting stuff from home sucks".)
I outsource my MX for exactly the same reason your company does: pobox.com does the anti-spam thing on all e-mail for the domain, and then sends the filtered stuff to the internal machine that will only talk to a pobox.com server.
Re:When is the last time Dvorak... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Here's a few more - readable this time... (Score:3, Interesting)
On the contrary, installation will be required every time. If the source is down, you have no software and you cannot work.
Good IT departments test VERY carefully before allowing an upgraded or even bugfixed app loose in a large installed base. This is because every company will have core things that they do which are unique to them, and the software "upgrade" may break those tasks. This is a VERY common problem. What you have no is no control over those damage inflicting "upgrades." This is not a good thing. There's a very good reason software isn't just handed to people in shrink wrap with a laconic "hey, install this."
You are seriously saying that an app on some web server somewhere, over networks and hardware you and your company have no way to repair or control, is superior to software and data on your laptop in terms of accessibility? There is no way. Individual machines with local software are far more accessible and reliable; if one goes down, one employee loses functionality. If the web service or the pipe to it goes down, they all do.
Depends on the software. The question is, what business software is not available in a desktop version inexpensively or even free, but you can get as a service inexpensively on a web site? You can get office suites, bitmap graphics software, structured graphics software, accounting software and so forth for not very much money (or none) per seat. Moving from this state to paying a web site to provide it isn't necessarily a better deal, or safer. It *could* be, but it requires very expensive software to be replaced by the web service, and examples of this are actually pretty rare.
This isn't an advantage of a web service as compared to shrinkwrap software. Good backup is an entirely separate issue. Furthermore, the web service backing up one software item and it's data doesn't solve the issue that the rest of the computer needs to be backed up as well, and in that sense, this is no favor to the computer user. The correct answer is complete and regular backups of the user's machine.
Previous poster's points you refer to:
Shrinkwrap providers also have incentives. They'd lke to sell more; they'd like for the user to be enthusiastic both about the product, and about support. If they can't sell more, they go out of business. I know what I'm talking about here, I've been running a software company selling an application that was initially brought to market in 1992. It is complex, extremely feature loaded, fast and stable. These things are the result of an ongoing process driven by precisely these issues - it matters if you leave bugs in or don