The hype over SaaS, driven by the legion of people who earn a living from Google’s advertising, has reached a fever pitch but like all trends it is starting to show its hollowness.
Looking at your thousand-dollar PC as a glorified text terminal is not only insulting, but also makes you less likely to upgrade. Innovation is driven by reward, so that insult could have long-term repercussions.
The thought of working around your corporate IT department is rewarding, because most of them are both overloaded and run by people who have nominal degrees and even less experience. Higher-ups starve IT, and the result is a frigid, timid creature. But the nice thing about IT is that it keeps us all on the same page, and can apply resources like a sledgehammer. At some point the “I’ll do it all on Google docs” model breaks down.
The next, next big version of the operating system, currently dubbed Windows 7, is likely to be a 2010 baby. Meanwhile, the previous iteration, XP, remains an option for some new PC buyers. In fact, Microsoft only recently released a version of SP3 for XP. It’s a fair bet there’ll be more service packs for Vista in the future. ^
What I’d like to see from Microsoft is a real implementation of network computing. Of course the software should run on our PCs. We could benefit from having a record of that software, and our operating systems, at Microsoft so when crashes happen, they could restore us. We have these nifty registries, can’t we export them? Of course, MSFT would have to get over some trust issues with their clientele, many of whom are never going to pay $500 for software they use at home and so are pirating it, but that could be overcome with a visible change in management direction.
When you install Windows, the installer should give you the option to test memory and disk and to see if drivers exist for your hardware. Simple, and from a user point of view, calming, but it’s not there. Why?
MSFT could make a killing selling software. Why: buy it from us, we add it to your cache on our servers, and if you have a system crash or need to reinstall, we’ll re-install it with the operating system.
We have software that can store a system state. Microsoft could pull an Iron Mountain and charge you to backup your restore points to servers in Redmond.
Opportunity abounds, and people are too busy being neurotic over Vista (which is an improvement) and SaaS (which is only good for GMail) to notice.
[...] of internet connections, and the unreliablity of browsers. Advantages: it’s free, no IT department controls it, and someone else updates it. Google is the champion of this [...]
[...] Apple beat in this regard, and only if they screw up and follow the dying trend of SaaS will they fail at this. The negative FUD (fear, uncertainty, despair) over Windows Vista is also overstated, because in [...]
[...] likes the product but has the wherewithal to buy it. The recent rush by Google to get people into online mesh applications is part of their desire to adapt to this new reality, as is Gmail. Want to bet their internal [...]
[...] time to get fleet-footed with that sea change. We can now surmise that Google’s great SaaS hype was a last-ditch attempt to have enough services to learn more about users and their demographic [...]
[...] business, while refining Windows 7 as a dual attack: sharing of data across multiple devices, not SaaS, and making a light and fast operating system because, among other reasons, portable devices like [...]
[...] I’ve written in the past of my opposition to cloud computing and skepticism about Software as a Service (SaaS). [...]