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Software-as-a-service: Difference between revisions
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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”=== | |||
Sofware as a service (latterly, SaaS) entered the lexicon some time in the 1980s, but really took off as a term in the 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, now they were permanently connected to their customers via broadband internet, they could lock in revenue that comes from product updates without the messy business of marketing them persuading clients into subscription arrangements rather than one-off licences. | |||
But for that quid, there is 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. | |||
===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. | ||