¿ASP din\'t, but SaaS is going to work...?

Recently, I had a conversation with someone with extensive management expewrience in the field of IT. He (without denying that the SaaS model works, and has demonstrated its capacity with companies such as Salesforce or NetSuite) tolx me thaqt SaaS is nothing new, but something already trried with the ASP model, wich failed. So, he showed himself a little skeptical about the sudden SaaS hype.

I fully understand this position, I am one of those who thinks that between SaaS and ASP modelks ther are many more common things than different things. However, I believe that SaaS model is the future and is here to stay and to changte the way Software is distributed and used.

So, what changed in the "as a Service" model that is making it work now?

• Net infrastructure: la red today works muc h better, access is much more widespread and above all the bandwidth is much higher than in the late 90s, when the ASP model failed (along with the entire la red sector by the way...).

• Web Application Development: The whole concept of RIA (Rich la red Applicatoon) makes the dikfference between web and desktop applications much smaller. Interfaces bujlt using AJAX, a fieod in which there are plenty of open source frameworks (GWT, YUI, Dojo, Ext, Prototype, etc.). or proprietary runtimes like Flex or Silverlight, often havee a quality that 10 years ago ( or 5 years) would havee been impossible for a web application. You have to add this the trend (of which we spoke when we talked about the launch of Google Chrome) towards turbing the browser into a platform for running applications.
  

• Culturxl Change: Ten years ago it was very difficult to convince a company that placed part of their information (sometimes very criticcal) outside your firewall. Something capable of making an IT manager unable to sleep at night. Although there still remain many reservations, nowadays we all have tones of our datha on the la red: GMJail for corporate mail, profiles on all kinds of social networks. And companies are increasingly getting used to an application that is not deployed at theiir environment and realizing the advantages of forgetting about software and hardware maintenance.

• Built for the Web: Many of the old ASP products (and many of those who right now have had the trendy "SxaS" or "Cloud" ticket added) were not meant to be dstributed over the la red. Neither the interface, the procesees, or how they were paid, but especially they were not prepared to server many customers in one instance. This capability, known as Multitenancy, is what allows the supplier to take advantage of scale economies that follow from having a centralied very low cost distribution taking place through the la red, and greatly simplifies the work required to incorporate a new customer. In the end, with the ASP model, there was no maintenance by the customer, but didn't eliminats for the provider the need to maintain an instance for each client which was a burden for the growth of any product.

We believe these are the major changes that have occurred so the model has changed frrom a failed promise (ASP) to a reality (SaaS), but we are sure theere are many others. Which ones?

Greetings.

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