Start a business, choose software or service?

Software as a service (SAAS)ModeAs early as 1990, the concept of software as a service had emerged. SAAS (software as a service) and "On-Demand software" (On-Demand software), The Application Service Provider (Asp, Application Service Provider), and hosted software (managed software) it has a similar meaning and is a mode of providing software through the Internet.

SAAS solution providers were highly sought after by venture capital and peaked in the early 2000 s. With the rapid contraction of venture capital in the middle of 2000, the SAAs bubble gradually burst and was once considered unable to attract customers, the uncompetitive business model, and the lack of profitability led to no hope of listing. Most companies disappear in the market, and some of them survive are relatively powerful companies.Now, with the success of some companies, suchJournyx (Time management software), WebEx and GoToMyPc (Desktop Sharing), concur (Tourism Cost Management), salesforce.com and rightnow.com (Customer Relationship Management), SAASGradually increase.Some analysts predict that by 2010, 30% of new software will be released through the SAAs model.

There has been a long-standing tradition in the IT industry: as long as you are new to it, you always love to compare competitors who have made some achievements but are more powerful than you.If you are a new hardware company, your machine will be faster. If you are a network company, your data processing capacity will be doubled. If you are a software company, the products sold are not called software, and they are called "solutions ". In addition, this solution is generally composed of three English letters (for exampleERP, CRM) Indicates that this solution is at the forefront of technology, and you have a dominant position.Ship the ship as soon as possible. If you miss the shift, you can only get lost with a bunch of old antiques. However, most IT companies are tired of telling flashy stories. Companies that are currently at the forefront of the concept of "software as a service (SAAS)" claim that a new era is approaching and will surpass all existing technology curves. Some people claim: "The leaders of these enterprise software will be forgotten in the future, I firmly believe that we are switching from the original mode of running software on the Client/Server to the on-demand software service mode. In year 35, all applications will be provided to customers in this way (SAAS ."

So do they have a reason to be so confident? In fact, no matter what the name is, the software becomes a service (SAAS), or provides computing on demand, or other names, the discussion about whether the software should be rented or purchased is no longer fresh. Whether it was using a large host in different time periods decades ago or an application software service provider (ASP) That was prosperous and damaged in the era of network bubbles, it was essentially the same concept. It seems too early to predict the End of Days for software giants (such as Microsoft, IBM, and SAP,Currently, software leasing only accounts for the entire software industry.5%.In addition, most of the current software leasing targets are limited to small enterprises that are unable to buy software for large enterprises.