Back in the old good days of enterprise software, we did not need to worry about our customers. We delivered bits on DVDs – it was up to the customers to struggle with installation, integration, management, customization and other aspects of software operations. We collected all the cash upfront, took another 25% in annual maintenance. Throwing software over the wall… that’s how we did it. Sometimes almost literally…
I now live in the SaaS world. My customers only pay us if we deliver a service level consistent with our SLAs. We are responsible for deployment, security, upgrades and so on. We operate software for our customers and we deliver it as service.
But there now seems to be a new way how to “throw software over the wall” again. Many software companies have repackaged their software as Amazon Machine Image (AMI) and relabeled them as SaaS or Cloud Computing. It’s so simple, it’s so clever: Dear customer, here is the image of our database, server, analytical engine, ETL tool, integration bus, dashboard etc. All you need it is go to AWS, get an account and start those AMIs. Scaling, integration, upgrades is your worry again. Welcome back to the world of enterprise software…
AMI is the new DVD and this approach to cloud computing is the worst thing that could happen to SaaS. And SaaS in my vocabulary is still Software as a Service…
