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by Michael Cote.
Original Post: SalesForce.com ASP
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The topic of ASP's came up today, and there just happens to be a new Washington Post article on SalesForce.com, a rather prominent one of 'em:
Analysts are paying attention because Salesforce.com stands at the forefront of a hotly debated movement, known variously as "software as a service," "utility computing" or "computing on demand." The grand idea is that companies should rent rather than buy their software and have it delivered over the Internet, paying subscription fees to run programs that reside on another company's computers.
. . .
"What we are doing here with our announcement is ending the religious war that has been going on," Siebel Vice President Keith Raffel said when asked why Siebel decided to offer an online service. "Companies who have been offering hosted versions have been saying, 'If you are not doing the hosted version, you are an idiot.' On the other side, companies were telling customers, 'Oh, no, you need all this intelligence and power we offer. The hosted version doesn't make sense.' "
Remember the old ASP days of yore? I think there's even a whole trade rag for it. Maybe they're back again. We like to call this "The Circle of Life" at the office: a new model/process/product/concept is proposed, everyone shoots it down, a more traditional model/process/product/concept is suggested, everyone realizes the more traditional approach won't work or isn't so great, a new model/process/product/concept is proposed (usually the same one)...repeat.
The product/service we do at the office is offered as an ASP for systems management: you just download one little piece of software to run behind your firewall, and all the rest can be served up in a browser. As something that's 90% (from the customer's perspective) a web application, very little installation is needed.
From a support perspective, it's a dream having all the data and software on our server, as all us .com crazies probably know. Of course, if you want to run all this on your own, you can install it as a product: it's both a product and a service.
OK, I hear you, enough work shilling. While we're on the topic of ASP's I've worked on, that other place I used to work, FundsXpress, was a similar ASP. My understanding is that they still are. And why not? If it's a publicly accesible web application, why have your customers maintain their own servers and software?
Good old ASPs: we'll see how they fair this go round in The Circle of Life.
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