ASP, Software as a Service, Cloud Computing or Whatever the Kids Are Calling It These Days. Part III of a Trip Down Memory Lane
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In a previous post, we chronicled the evolution of the provision of computing resources from the days of gigantic, room filling behemoths requiring chilling towers and close proximity to the users to the emerging concept of “cloud” computing where the computing resources are “somewhere out there” in the undefined, amorphous thing called the “cloud”.
In this post, we will discuss the evolution of the provision and use of software from floppy drive, hard drive based software to the cloud applications of today.
Once again, please forgive the trip down memory lane. At the advent of my legal career, the use of computers in anything other than a giant research lab was only a gleam in somebody’s eye. In my law office, documents were created on manual typewriters with carbon paper and onion skin. Lawyers dictated into a machine the size of a small refrigerator or to a stenographer who took it down in shorthand and transcribed it. It's true.
Look it up on the interwebs. This is how it really happened. Electric typewriters with automatic correction capabilities (tamping a white, chalky substance into the indention made by the incorrect character) were a big breakthrough. Then we stepped into the new age. We obtained two “magcard” word processors that truly were the size of refrigerators and made so much noise that they had to be housed in a separate room lined with insulating material. The “software” was hard wired and resident on the machines and the documents were recorded on a magnetic card the size of the older data entry cards and these cards were read by the machine, which activated an electric typewriter that pounded out the document until a “stop code” was reached, whereupon an operator inserted the appropriate words in the blank. We were cutting edge.
At some point in my career, I was fortunate to obtain a job in-house with an outsourcing and software company, although I had neither experience nor knowledge of any such things. This company managed data centers (primarily for banks) and produced software (again primarily for banks) for giant, honking mainframes. Desktop computers were still the exception rather than the rule. In fact, my company had a “desktop czar” that had to approve all purchases for desktops (even in a “technology” company!). The software was generally written in COBOL and the computing resources were generally in the same room or building as the user and ordinarily owned by the company employing the users. The company I worked for changed that paradigm somewhat by entering into agreements whereby they purchased the computer equipment from the customer, hired the customer’s data processing personnel, operated the data center in place on the customer’s premises and installed my company’s proprietary software in the data center over the course of the contract term. My company also did some remote facilities management where they owned the data center off site from the customer and provided remote processing through dedicated lines. In all cases, the customer could touch, feel and taste the computing resources if desired.
Fast forward to the Internet age and then fast forward again to the age where massive amounts of computer resources are looking for users as opposed to the reverse.
In the arena where there is an abundance of computing resources, virtualization software allows for the coordination of servers and the creation of many giant, ever changing computer environments that to the user looks like the machine on their desk. The internet, the drop in hardware prices, increase in computer power, excess of computing resources and virtualization software brought us to the “cloud”, that amorphous, not easily definable thing that is just outside our computer monitor and in a lot of ways, not easily distinguishable from magic (Clarke’s Third Law).
Now, in the cloud, somewhere out there, computing resources are abundant and from somewhere out there, software and services are provided. Called, at various times, application services providers (ASP), on-demand software, software as a service (SaaS) or cloud computing, it means that the applications reside somewhere other than the machine on your desk, they are accessed over the internet and are probably paid for like a utility (i.e. as needed and without a long term contract).
So, what should you promise if you are a vendor of software as a service and what should you expect if your business decides to avail itself of such service? You probably already use this even if you are not aware of it. LinkedIn, FaceBook, Twitter, Gmail, salesforce.com and others are in use inside business enterprises as we speak. These are examples of the phenomenon about which we are writing.
We will explore some of the promises and expectations of vendors and customers in a subsequent post.
