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Software-as-a-service: Difference between revisions
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{{a|tech| | {{a|tech| | ||
{{image|Toaster|png|It’s got its own app, and bluetooth.}} | |||
}}{{quote|“All [[reg tech]] ''solutions'' are alike; each reg tech ''problem'' is a problem in its own way.” <br> | }}{{quote|“All [[reg tech]] ''solutions'' are alike; each reg tech ''problem'' is a problem in its own way.” <br> | ||
:—Leo Tolstoy, ''Anna Karenina''}}{{c|Devil}} | :—Leo Tolstoy, ''Anna Karenina''}}{{c|Devil}} | ||
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{{d|Software as a service|/ˈsɒftweər əz ə ˈsɜːvɪs/|n|}} | {{d|Software as a service|/ˈsɒftweər əz ə ˈsɜːvɪs/|n|}} | ||
A fancy way of selling a warranty on a toaster. | A fancy way of [[Do not buy a warranty on a toaster|selling a warranty on a toaster]]. | ||
Charging a running cost for software which, by reference to its own ''raison d’être'' shouldn’t ''need'' a lot of maintenance, unless you ''built it'' to need maintenance. “[[SAAS]]” to its friends; glorified ''[[rent-seeking]]'' to the poor sods who have it imposed on them, software as a service is the disguised ''re''intermediation of a function by a tool purportedly there to remove it. It is popular as it is the only business model most [[reg tech entrepreneur]]s have managed to figure out. | Charging a running cost for software which, by reference to its own ''raison d’être'' shouldn’t ''need'' a lot of maintenance, unless you ''built it'' to need maintenance. “[[SAAS]]” to its friends; glorified ''[[rent-seeking]]'' to the poor sods who have it imposed on them, software as a service is the disguised ''re''intermediation of a function by a tool purportedly there to remove it. It is popular as it is the only business model most [[reg tech entrepreneur]]s have managed to figure out. | ||
If your software were any good you would design a [[user interface|user-interface]] easy enough for the [[meatware]] to deal with ''so you didn’t need a service contract''. Right? | If your software were any good you would design a [[user interface|user-interface]] easy enough for the [[meatware]] to deal with ''so you didn’t need a service contract''. Right? | ||
===“SaaS” is short for “software ''development'' as a service”=== | |||
“Software as a service” (latterly, “SaaS”) entered the lexicon some time in the 1980s, but really entered the vogue in the mid 2000s<ref>[https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=SaaS%2C+software+as+a+service&year_start=1975&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing= Let me Google that for you]</ref> when it dawned on software providers that, since they were permanently connected to their customers via the internet, they could lock in revenue that comes from product updates without the messy business of persuading existing clients to upgrade — involving as it does having a revised product that is materially ''better'' than the one they already have — into subscription arrangements rather than one-off licences. | |||
But for that quid, there was a quo: the annual subscription was typically smaller than an outright licence, and you did have to upgrade the software: patching, enhancing, and updating. | |||
Of course, “software as a service” isn’t charging a running cost for static software. It is charging a running cost for ''improving'' software. | |||
These notions seem to be lost on the [[legaltech]] world. [[Legaltech]] aspires to be transformative — to bring we luddite attorneys kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century — but transformation has only transient [[Legaltech value|value]]. Once delivered, the benefit ceases to accrue. You pay for it once, and can only charge for it once. | |||
Hence the unpreparedness of legaltech customers to pay for their providers to squat on their documents, charging them hosting fees, or to pay repeat fees. | |||
===The [[reg tech]] business model conundrum=== | ===The [[reg tech]] business model conundrum=== | ||
It is a familiar experience amongst buyers of [[reg tech]] that products which look ''fabulous'' at the pitch when the [[general counsel]] is watching, tend to underwhelm in production when set upon by [[morlock|those]] who actually need them to work. It is one thing to perform [[magic]] on a pre-prepared [[non-disclosure agreement]] (“here’s one I made earlier”); it’s quite another to dispatch the knotty, irritating, unpredictable and frequently ''absurd'' [[real-life legal problems]] that your staff have to solve at the coalface. | It is a familiar experience amongst buyers of [[reg tech]] that products which look ''fabulous'' at the pitch when the [[general counsel]] is watching, tend to underwhelm in production when set upon by [[morlock|those]] who actually need them to work. It is one thing to perform [[magic]] on a pre-prepared [[non-disclosure agreement]] (“here’s one I made earlier”); it’s quite another to dispatch the knotty, irritating, unpredictable and frequently ''absurd'' [[real-life legal problems]] that your staff have to solve at the coalface. | ||
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Misalignment and configuration are different problems, but most [[reg tech]] offerings suffer from both, because they both stem from the same fact of life: while there is an unquantifiably huge volume of [[tedium]] to be automated, ''no two instances of [[tedium]] are quite alike''. {{tedium is particular capsule}} | Misalignment and configuration are different problems, but most [[reg tech]] offerings suffer from both, because they both stem from the same fact of life: while there is an unquantifiably huge volume of [[tedium]] to be automated, ''no two instances of [[tedium]] are quite alike''. {{tedium is particular capsule}} | ||
Notwithstanding breathless claims to the contrary from people who should really know better — who ''do'', in fact, know better — this has been the story of technological progress in the legal industry in the last thirty years. There has been ''tons'' of new legal technology. The [[BlackBerry]]. Citrix. [[Track changes|Document comparison]]. Document management. Optical character recognition. Voice recognition. Cloud computing. Remote access. Working from home. Skype. Virtual deal rooms. e-Discovery. Legal process outsourcing. All things that effectively, quickly and cheaply solve generic problems, that are intuitive, that boost productivity from the get-go. | Notwithstanding breathless claims to the contrary from people who should really know better — who ''do'', in fact, know better — this has been the story of technological progress in the legal industry in the last thirty years. There has been ''tons'' of new legal technology. The [[BlackBerry]]. Citrix. [[Track changes|Document comparison]]. Document management. Optical character recognition. [[Voice recognition]]. Cloud computing. Remote access. Working from home. Skype. Virtual deal rooms. e-Discovery. Legal process outsourcing. All things that effectively, quickly and cheaply solve generic problems, that are intuitive, that boost productivity from the get-go. | ||
SaaS just never quite manages this. We’ve lost count of the products that do ''a'' job, but just ''not quite the one you’d like them to''. That oblige you to abandon [[Microsoft Word]], or export all your data to the cloud, or that can’t handle parallel routing. Data extraction engines that can’t handle regular expressions. | SaaS just never quite manages this. We’ve lost count of the products that do ''a'' job, but just ''not quite the one you’d like them to''. That oblige you to abandon [[Microsoft Word]], or export all your data to the cloud, or that can’t handle parallel routing. Data extraction engines that can’t handle regular expressions. | ||