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Since the discussions of Web 2.0 and SaaS at the Microsoft IT Pro Town Hall Meeting last week, I've been giving a lot of thought to the idea of Software as a Service and whether it will ever really catch on. The benefits for some business customers are obvious: a fixed monthly cost with no worries about software maintenance and upgrading sounds like a pretty good deal to company managers who are spending big bucks for productivity programs and the IT personnel to maintain them.
But don't expect those IT professionals themselves to get behind the idea anytime soon. If the reactions at the meeting were any indication, IT people see SaaS as a threat to their very existence - much the same way factory workers viewed automation a few decades ago (and those fears turned out to be pretty well founded).
Based on what I've heard from home users, they aren't too enthralled with the idea of paying a monthly or annual fee to lease their software, either. This is true even if you tell them it may cost them less and even though most of them know that they don't really "own" the software they buy anyway under current licensing agreements.
What it all boils down to, I think, is an issue of control. IT administrators are, by their very nature, control freaks. Tom and I certainly are. We could pay someone to host our web servers and our Exchange server and maybe we'd save a little money (and we'd almost certainly save a certain amount of hassle), but having those servers somewhere across the Internet and not under our control is not an attractive proposition. Being at the mercy of some stranger hundreds or thousands of miles away to fix things when there's a problem is more than a little scary. Trusting someone else with your web sites and your email isn't easy, not for us control freaks.
Of course, the SaaS concept will probably fly with a lot of people. Our society seems to be becoming more and more willing to give over control to big government, more eager to have someone else take care of us, less determined to take responsiblity for our own lives. Why not abdicate control of our software, too?
I don't expect to go easily into that good night myself, but I have to reluctantly admit that SaaS probably is what the future of computing looks like. 'Til then, a few diehards will continue to embrace the DIY philosophy.
