Is SaaS a throw back to computer bureaux of yore?

Computer bureaux date back to the era when computers were expensive and batch processing and dumb terminals multiplexed into central mainframe to maximise usage were the norm. A discrete service like payroll or accounting systems was offered on a centralised server on time-sharing basis for multiple-clients and the client data was transferred via magnetic tapes and disks for batch processing. The charging was usage-based for the computer time needed. The SaaS offerings provide web-based, installation-free access to managed services on centralised hosts providing integrated applications like enterprise resource planning systems or customer relationship management. The latter are truly distributed offerings, whereby data from the central repository could be manipulated on the local PC. The charging is normally based on user population and concurrent users. The motivation in 60-70s was sharing expensive resources but nowadays concerns like availability, scalability, reliability and security are paramount. The disjointed, slow, batch and cumbersome approach of the bureaux has acquired 24x7 availability, responsiveness and seamless-integration in SaaS world. The whole burden of performing license-management, version-control, resilient-configuration, secure-access, disaster recovery etc is devolved on ASP which is more complex nowadays. We have moved from pseudo-parallelism of bureau to distributed, concurrent environment of SaaS. So despite the surface level similarity in their approach they are two distinctly different beasts. In both cases the application resides outside the enterprise but the expectations, operations, technology, rationale and scope are totally different.

The computers were bulky, slow and expensive resource in pre-70s so it made sense to share them for common business functions like payroll amongst a number of clients. The rapid advances in technology heralded advent of PC in 80s, then subsequent increase in memory availability, faster CPUs and faster communication speeds made it viable to have in-house LAN-based client-server offerings to support these functions. The PCs were cheap enough to allow individuals ownership without worrying about idle time. Also the business users sought decision-support systems to complement transactional systems and the IS/IT departments started in the companies thus fading time-sharing.

The complexity involved in deploying and upgrading software in distributed environment, the consequential difficulties in negotiating relevant licenses, the interoperability issues, ubiquity of browser-based client, fast-and-cheap communication, affordable scalability, the trend towards outsourcing etc have all aided the drive towards SaaS. Hardware and software technology is seen as purchasable commodity and the organisations prefer to concentrate on their core competencies, expecting secure and resilient service from experts. The ASPs also feel confident that benchmarks exist to provide requisite concurrency and performance from their server farms, allowing them to focus on their domain-expertise. Also the approach is usually cheaper than in-house solution when TCO is taken into account. All these factors mean that SaaS offerings will continue to grow in foreseeable future.