Am I the only one very skeptical of this 'Software as a service' thing?

Because I don't know about anyone else, but I've always preferred actually you know, OWNING things. The feel of coming home from the shops (or I guess buying on a site like Amazon.com and getting it delivered) with something new and getting to do whatever the hell I want with it is kind of awesome.

I see no reason to ever give up any of that. In fact, part of me suspects both sides of the political spectrum (and a lot of companies nowadays) would love to take away the idea of private property and rights and basically just return everything to the feudal system. That's what I see a lot of 'services' as, an attempt to reduce people to numbers and to make them all the same, to take away people's rights to actually own anything and to take away much of the fun of website management and setup.

I just get a bad taste in my mouth from all this stuff. It's also why in the video game world, I practically NEVER buy games as digital downloads unless there's no other choice. I prefer the rights to resell my games and lend them to others over some silly convenience crap.

More to the point, it reminds me rather worryingly of the old days of free forum hosting and buying expensive 'services' that basically just locked you into their offerings and let you do nothing interesting on them. I quit that stuff with services like Invisionfree and Proboards, I ain't buying into anything like that ever again (besides, installing modifications and hacks is one of the best things about forum setup).

So yeah, is anyone else a bit wary of the whole 'software as a service' thing and cloud providers and other stuff? And do they sometimes worry about how many people seem to be willing to give up most of their rights for nothing more than 'peace of mind'?

 

Sceptcism is right. There are good and bad "cloud" providers.

Where it is done well, it does work.

 

I think there are a few factors at play here which can be beneficial to either party -

Pros for Provider

• IP - no transfer of source code, or even reverse-engineerable binaries
• Piracy - similar to above, but you can control distribution to prevent unauthorized use
• Updates - can control roll-out of updates, and effectively support one version rather than n
• Easier to project revenue and factor in on-going support

Cons for Provider

• Complexity in delivery (operational cost, uptime, etc.)
• Less money in sales, at least early on
• Liabilities

Pros for Consumer

• Less monetary risk, try it, usually for a free period, or discontinue when you're done
• No software or infrastructure required; some stuff just isn't viable for consumers -> "what, you don't support PHP 3?!", or look at the reaction to Discourse: most owners couldn't even run it.

Cons for Consumer

• Requires trust - privacy? reliability? support? -> especially if still paying
  
• No ownership - can they up and leave, if so, then what?

Sometimes it's hard to tell. Where is the line drawn? I think it really depends on the product, and the type of consumer wanting to use it.

Some examples

• Google Search - you can find/index/search links yourself, no?
• Google Mail - you can host your own mail, no? (probably, but it's a pain, especially spam) what's the value/time trade-off?
• Blogs / Wordpress - what are the odds of getting hacked? 1 in 3?
• Forums - maintaining is a pain, for casual owners maybe hosted is easier?

 

Google works as a service only because of sheer tech required and resources. Search engines are never going to be something normal people can run successfully, because they'd just require more money and time/effort spent than most people (and companies) have.

Email is usually accepted as a service because it's one of those things where ownership isn't really important. Same with most communication methods, no one sets up their own postal service, telephone lines/operator or instant messenger nowadays.

But I wouldn't class forums or blogs among this, because they're basically an individual's personal space/property. That's not the kind of thing you want to hand over to third parties to run, especially if you want to become successful (the rules on a lot of services are terrible for anyone who wants anything more than small time success).

Also, I doubt the chance of a blog getting hacked is one in three. I've seen way less blogs get hacked than that, and I'd say most of those that do come down to either not bothering with updates or using a terrible hosting company.

 

I agree. I tend to prefer 'owning' items I purchase. But cloud providers and software as service has it's place. The main one for me would be lower cost of entry/startup.

My whole forum adventure and history began on hosted forum service Ezboard back in 1999 as an easy and low cost way of starting my site's forums. Then when it started to grow 500+ posts/day, I started looking for my own hosted forum software - choice was UBB vs vBulletin 1.0 and well the rest is history thanks to Freddie's Ezboard to vB importer. But i jumped into the deep end with dedicated hosting via Rackspace when I was a noob so US$400-800/month hosting was my entry point in 2000 - expensive and still the server crashed (MySQL 3.x hehe) So SAAS or cloud hosting from my perspective has a place at least in lowering that entry cost.

As to specifically cloud hosting or what some folks loosely term cloud/vps hosting with hourly billing, it's lower cost of entry is awesome for developers or folks who just want to test stuff for a few hours, days or weeks i.e. Amazon EC2, Rackspace Cloud, Digital Ocean, PheonixNap Secure Cloud. I always get my Centmin Mod users to test first on such cloud providers first as it only costs as little as US$0.007/hr or US$5/month = lower cost of entry

Everyone has to start their online presence or journey somewhere, so think of it as a stepping stone to bigger and better things

 

I too like owning things. For me the biggest issue with SaaS is can I get my data out any old time I want without asking or jumping through hoops? If the answer is ambiguous it's not for me.

The second part of the equation isn't really the providers problem but once my data is out, what can I do with it? Is there third party support? Can I easily import into another platform? If not, again it's not for me.

 

The difference between SaaS and the older models of hosting your own software is to me like renting or buying an apartment/ house.

If you rent, you can add your furniture, paint walls (to a certain extent, depending on the landlord), connect a phone, get Internet, get electricity, Cable TV, water and garbage service, etc. The grounds around the apartment building are usually kept by other people. If something major breaks, it gets fixed by the landlord. You don't have to worry about it. That is SaaS.

Owning the house, you also get the same things like phone, internet, electricity, etc and can do what you want with the walls, and everything else. But. if things break, the grass grows, bushes get wild, you are responsible to fix it, mow it, trim it, etc. That would be self-hosting.

Some people like owning a house, some like renting and with renting, you definitely have less of a hassle.

Scott

 

I understand what you mean, but you've basically just said why I have no interest in renting property (or anything else).

I also don't particularly trust a lot of companies out there nowadays, they always make me suspect they just want power more than anything else. It's kind of why I deny all monetisation requests and say that for the most part, I make money on my own behalf (as far as my sites go), not to give money to fat cats and business people who just want to profit off of other people's work.

 

Everything you purchase, products and services, are made from some company and they are all run by business people wanting to make sure their companies make profits. So, every purchase you make, which is unavoidable to live in today's society, is doing exactly what you say you don't want to do. It is how capitalism works. Make a great product or service, make money and profit by selling it, invest that money back into your business, grow your business, make new jobs, make more new great products or service, wash, rinse repeat.

I'd say, only a relatively small number of companies have a "power" position, where if decisions are made improperly, it can affect the welfare of millions of people. And the good thing about capitalism, if the people don't like what they are getting, they have the right not to have to buy it. So capitalism is a check a balance system. The only time there is a danger of the check and balance missing is with a monopoly and for that reason there are regulatory agencies in place in every government controlling any free market economy around the world. So, hopefully they are looking out for our best interests and for the most part, it does seem to work.

The fact in individual cases some fat cat could misuse your trust is also a fact of capitalism life and what I believe you are talking about. But, because it is something rare that happens (think about how much you buy to how much you get screwed) you should certainly not go through life being paranoid all the time about making any purchases and avoiding everything new or different on the premise you might get screwed. You'll miss out on a lot of good things for sure.

Oh, btw, getting screwed can happen with purchasing anything and in some cases of ownership, the pain of getting screwed is much greater. For example, you could buy a house, your own beautiful house, and think it is great buy, only to find out a few months later the foundation is actually sinking. Cracks end up all over the walls of your house and it causes all kinds of havoc with your plumbing, a pipe cracks, you come home to a flooded house, your furniture is ruined and your computer is wasted. But hey! It is all yours!

You might be able to sue and you might get redeemed. If you rented, at the first signs of problems, the first crack, you could move out and go someplace else and in that same ideology, any good SaaS offering will give you ownership of your data, which you can take and run with at any moment. The only issue currently is the market is still fairly new, so moving away is harder. But cloud computing is a game changer and it is the new IT economy.

The analogy between renting an apartment and owning a house and SaaS or no SaaS isn't perfect either, but I think the fact you can also get screwed by owning anything just as much as not owning it is demonstrated and thus why it is not a reason to avoid SaaS.

And SaaS does work. One of the biggest SaaS providers in the World has been growing by leaps and bounds the last 12 years. Salesforce.com. And they are not the only ones in this fast growing market.

I'd also venture to say, much more good than bad happens in the world. We just take the good too much for granted and hear about the bad too often in the media and thus we are indirectly taught to be paranoid, when we really don't need to be. Cautious, yes. Always. Paranoid. Naw. Not needed. If we ever get into a situation, where everyone is out to simply screw everyone else, then the human race would be doomed. I don't see it happening. At least not in my lifetime.

Scott