It's the End of Installed and we Know it ...
Sorry about my twisted 80s music headline ... had to do it. In any event, earlier this morning, I came across this article in Managing Automation that describes how yet another Spend Management vendor has gotten On-Demand religion. In this case, the convert is Tradestone, a global sourcing provider. What's insightful about this particular article is that it discusses the pricing transformation inherent in the switch to On-Demand: "While the on-premises version of [Tradestone’s] software lists for between $300,000 and $1 million (based on the number of seats licensed and amount of services required), the SaaS version ranges from $100 to $300 per user per month (depending on the number of users) -- without any additional monies spent on application implementation and maintenance. Suppliers that just want to use the software to collaborate with retailers and product developers pay a small one-time fee to cover operating costs." While this is only a minor announcement from a very focused vendor, I always find pricing intelligence like this useful.
- Jason Busch
- Jason Busch
Fiction: All apps should be pure browser-based.
When's the last time you fired up a browser-based spreadsheet? How about a browser-based word processor? Browser-based Powerpoint? Browser-based MathCAD? Browser-based [any serious non-forms or non-transaction-based application]?
Right.
We've been hearing various versions of the remote app fantasy for decades now. Remember Scott McNealy's "the network is the computer?"
So that we can remember how many times and in how many forms the remote app mantra has been repeated over the years, here's a silly 60's music passage for you in response to your silly 80's music passage:
"Little apps on the web,
Little apps made of ticky-tacky,
Little apps, little apps,
Little apps, all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same."
Sorry, Jason, and sorry, Tim -- software is not ticky-tacky, and it doesn't all look just the same. You can build some great business software with Cobol and CICS (sorry for the 60's reference -- I mean, of course, their modern web equivalents), but there's a vast amount of stuff you simply can't build well at all.