Stop it, you silly SaaS!

In his weekly InfoWorld column this week, Ephraim Schwartz invokes yet another acronym -- SaaS, or Software as a Service. He discusses how products modeled after Salesforce.com are moving beyond the salesforce to invade other parts of the enterprise. But this post is not to agree with Mr. Schwartz but to berate his (and the industry's) over-use of acronyms and, in this case, the bare-faced cheek of putting lipstick on a pig that's grown more attractive over the years, e.g. application service providers (ASP). For that is what SaaS is -- nothing more, nothing less -- and coiffuring the pig doesn't make it any less of a pig. The passage of time might have made it a less unattractive pig, but that doesn't change the fact that it has an ugly-pig-past. Mr. Schwartz is often a bellwether of future trends; his latest article exemplifies two habits that the IT industry needs to break:

1. Generating acronyms like it's going out of fashion, and
2. Overhyping the technology-of-the-moment and then later trying to hide the fact by giving it a new name when, inevitably, the same idea comes to the fore once more.

It's like Gator renaming itself Claria.  It's still the same software doing the same things it's always done (Gator was labeled 'spyware' plenty of times in its past; see the latest Wired magazine for an article on this), but because it's now promoted as 'adware' we're supposed to think that's okay? As Bertie Wooster might say, "Piffle!" It's a once-ugly-pig, and you should beware the idea of kissing it as much as you did when you were first introduced.

Comments

[Michael Mankowski]

I would disagree with equating ASP and SaaS. In the ASP model, software which is written for client/server is "served" up by a hosting firm to end users. The software is not necessarily configured to be delivered through a Web browser. In SaaS, the application is designed to be delivered over the Web from day one and all functionality is accessible through any browser.

[Dave]

Thanks for your considered comment, Michael! In my opinion, though, the difference between ASP and SaaS that you identified is merely a function of an incremental change in software design philosophy (e.g. build it for the web, not client/server). I'm not arguing that Salesforce.com and others like it aren't better than the ASP offerings of yore; they are, because they've matured and have the means to overcome the problems that were so-very-clear 4 years ago. But that doesn't change the fact that it's the same concept with new lipstick, and it's vulnerable to the same fundamental flaws to which the ASP's of years ago were prone. Renaming it doesn't change that fact, and it's the industry's apparent ease with this small lie that annoys me.

As it happens, I've been advocating the use of Salesforce.com in our own organization for some time. (We use ACT right now, and it's a bear to maintain, for various reasons.) So I'm not against the ASP/SaaS model by any means. I'd just wish that we'd agree to call a spade a spade and not try to obviate the realities of these things by referring to them as "turf removal devices".