Software? Service?

I remember when I wrote a paper not long ago, I still saw it on the Internet, saying:

"On-demand (software as a service) is a hosting and Application Service Provider (ASP: Application Service Provider) internet technology-based second-generation application hosting service. Enterprises no longer purchase software licenses, install software locally, or maintain software on their own. Instead, on-demand service providers remotely provide software services required by enterprises. Through the Internet, enterprise end users can directly and remotely use various enterprise application software such as customer relationship management, sales management, and partner management; on-demand service providers charge each user's "subscription fees" on a monthly basis for each service (corresponding to each of the original software )."

The general understanding is as follows:
The Internet makes it a public project and forms a new software industry chain
The Internet is turning software back from the front of the screen to the back-to-back, making it a carrier of content, expert knowledge, and services based on the Internet. If the Internet is an "information expressway", software is the vehicle running on the road, and the car is loaded with information content, expert knowledge and services. In the current business model, enterprises not only need to repair roads, buy cars, but also manage the maintenance of vehicles. The transportation cost of goods is very high. However, enterprises only need "goods" (content, expert knowledge, and services). In the future, enterprises will no longer build their own "roads ", and no longer buy "car" and maintenance "car", but after booking "goods", "goods" will automatically come to the door.

In this case, the following occurs:
This vision of turning it from an enterprise department to a public engineering (such as utility and logistics) has become vaguely visible, and its appearance means that the software industry will be re-divided.

The current software industry chain is divided by product levels, including operating systems, front-end office, databases, middleware, and application software. However, this chain will be gradually shortened. Taking Microsoft as an example, from the early operating system to the later database and middleware, to the current application software, it involves all the links in the chain, oracle already involves databases, middleware, and application software. sap has begun to work on products of different levels, such as databases. All of these phenomena indicate that the industrial chain with the division of labor at the product level is being shortened, become a game of a few giant companies.

At the same time, new chains supporting it public engineering are being formed, including business solution consultants, outsourcing software developers, and on-demand service providers (On-Demand ASP) and data backup service providers. Product companies (such as Microsoft) are outsourcing the software production part more and more; the new generation of on-demand service providers are looking for external sources dedicated to making software for themselves; outsourcing developers of software scale are evolving towards "software manufacturers. These changes have already taken place in India. Many former outsourcers have already provided OEM products to American companies, similar to power plants that supply power grids, while on-demand service providers will be similar to power grid companies.

The division of labor in the new software industry is closer to that in traditional industries such as the manufacturing industry, indicating that the software industry will enter a mature and stable stage and will no longer be a "high-tech industry ". In particular, the Internet and software itself will be the same carrier, and the final information content, expert knowledge and services will be transmitted to end customers through them. In this way, the software itself has a new positioning, will certainly give birth to a new software development process to meet new needs.

We can see that the Internet is profoundly changing the software industry from the industrial chain to the business model. It can be said that software has created the Internet, and the Internet has reborn the software industry.

I also think that software development is becoming easier and easier. The emergence of computers is something that people previously thought only professionals could do. Now everyone can do it. In the future, everyone may be able to build an information system. Software companies are more of a kind of service integration and optimization.