Moving Beyond SaaS Towards 'Software + Services'- Part 1

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 17:12:03 GMT

There are are tons of blogs and theories on how the world of software is changing with the advent of a new delivery model, SaaS- Software as a Service.

The key question that arises today is whether the software delivery model will remain SaaS or will morph into an even more evolved avatar of this concept. Analysts and software vendors are increasingly veering around to the view that going forward, the world will move beyond SaaS and embrace “Software + Services.” Simply explained, what this means is that customers will not abandon the excessive processing power they have accumulated in their current investments in desktops, servers and local environments, neither will they ignore the advantages offered by hosted services, their more cost-effective, maintenance-free orientation, and ease-of-use.

The next phase of the software journey, the space where vendors will find themselves, will be this Software + Services domain. Software + Services is an additive model which embraces SaaS, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Web 2.0 technologies. When the industry refers to Web 2.0, it’s really are talking about a rich Web experience with advertising-based monetization. When the industry talks about Software as a Service, it is referring to software delivery, which is hosted software. And when it’s talking about SOA, it is focusing on service composition and federation.

Clearly, then, Software + Services will represent a rich combination of Online (cloud services) and on premise software. In the emerging world, organizations will move beyond Software-as-a-Service to include on-premise server and client-side software assets and deliver compelling experiences that leverage the best of hosted and offline software. In this environment, users will be presented with a choice and have integration across multiple devices and delivery methods, to build flexible and optimized solutions.

The Software + Services model will be driven by affordability and will provide customers with a new world of information access at anytime, anywhere and on any device. I'm bullish on this model getting widely adopted in the industry as the reasons for this are manifold. Customers today are looking for a heightened software experience. They not only want to click and run any application, no matter where it resides, they also want to use the rich processing power and computing capacity in their phones, their laptops, their desktops and yes, their televisions sets. The goal is to complement those things with services that exist in the cloud.

My next post will be on how this model impacts India and various segments- Enterprise, Small and Medium Businesses and Consumers.

S+S Musings

Moving Beyond SaaS Towards 'Software + Services'- Part 1