Back in the antiquity of computing, it’s not that long ago possibly some of you will remember, there used to be a bulky terminal sitting on your desk. This terminal was connected to the company’s network, and allowed you to enquire about the level of stock, progress of an order, state of an account, and so on. Inter-departmental memos were either handwritten, or typed by a nameless girl in the typing pool, and delivered by the company mail-boy. There was no email, spreadsheets, word processing or the Internet.
Then came the PC, and it freed workers from the centrally controlled computer system. There was still a box on your desk that looked the same as a terminal, but you could type your own memos and reports, and use spreadsheets for all manner of things. After a while the PCs were connected to the Internet, and email swept away the company mail-boy. The software was installed on your office PC, and all your data was stored there, or on a file server attached to the Local Area Network (LAN).
When all this happened there was some resistance, by die-hard IT professionals, to the autonomy that PCs gave the user. There was also a large logistical problem, how do you keep track of all the software on the ever growing number of PCs in the company? Now there are growing demands for access to company data at any time, and anywhere.
The latest buzz word in the IT world is SaaS – that is Software as a Service. A day doesn’t go by without an article mentioning SaaS appearing in my web browser.
Oh how the pendulum swings. With SaaS, that PC on your desk will act just like the terminal of old, all be it a much smarter one. The software that used to be installed on your PC is now installed on another computer to which your PC is connected by the Internet.
SaaS solves the problems of portability, the Internet is available everywhere. It also removes the problem of software proliferation and maintenance. Financial savings can also be made by companies, both big and small. By adopting the SaaS methodology, there will be reductions in the cost of hardware, software, and staff levels in the IT department.
SaaS provides not only word processing, spreadsheets and the like, but extends to other applications that a company, however small, will require. The cost of writing, and maintaining software is enormous. Many projects in the past have been curtailed because of cost. These costs can now be shared across organisations, because the SaaS provider develops and maintains the software, not just for one company, but any that wish to use it, provided, they pay.
Google’s SaaS offering is a package called Google Apps. It provides word processing, spreadsheet, calendar, chat, web page creation, and email. There are 3 levels of entry into Google Apps, Standard Edition which is free; Premier Edition for a cost of US$50 per user per year; Education Edition which is also free. The Standard Edition is supported by Google advertising, while the Premier, and Education Edition are ad free.
eStuff has already featured articles on the Google offerings, as well as Spresent, and Thumbstacks (1, 2). ThinkFree also provides word processing, spreadsheet, presentation applications, and also 1GB of data storage, all for free.
SaaS will not just change IT in the workplace, but also for the home user. More and more people want to sever the ties to the desktop PC, and do their computing wherever they wish.
