Revenge of the desktop app

The cloud is taking over the world of applications, casting a shadow on the desktop. The browser rules. Operating systems are simply plumbing. The Web is the new OS.

The tipping point for the on-demand, software-as-a-service applications has come. No software, as Marc Benioff likes to say, and no downloads. All you need is a browser and Google Apps, Facebook, Amazon.com, MyYahoo, HotMail, Zoho, Salesforce.com, TWiki, or whatever applications (sometimes known as services) you prefer for business or personal use.

If this is really the case, then why is my desktop littered with hybrid applications such as Thwirl, Yahoo Messenger, Alert Thingy, Skype, Gtalk, and a bunch of other widgets and toolbars.

It turns out that taking advantage of computing resources on client devices has some value. Adobe AIR and Microsoft Silverlight are breathing new life into the desktop and so-called rich Internet applications, or RIAs. Browsers are also benefiting from the new technologies. As ZDNet blogger and Adobe evangelist Ryan Stewart writes:

While I'm a huge advocate of desktop RIAs, I think the browser should still be getting a bunch of the attention. And in fact, the browser is still where most of the energy is and as a result a really good RIA platform will build on what they know in the browser and leverage that in their desktop clients.

Look at Adobe. We've got the Flash Player in the browser and you can use ActionScript as well as the Flex Framework to build browser RIAs. Then you can take that exact same knowledge/code and start building a desktop application on AIR. Look at Microsoft. You can build a C# and XAML application in Silverlight then take that code and start building a desktop application in WPF. Look at Java. You can write Java code along (soon) with JavaFX and run it in the browser or as a regular Java app. Seeing a pattern? Same thing with Curl. You can use the Curl language to build a Curl application in the browser and now with Nitro you can take that code and build a desktop application. Mozilla Prism is the most basic example because all you're basically doing is taking a browser application written in Ajax and turning it into a desktop application. The browser space is also where a lot of the Ajax frameworks exist and where companies like OpenLaszlo exist, so there's room for all of those to grow.

Data is increasing moving into the cloud, just as the bits designated as your money are accessed on a mainframe through an ATM card. But the desktop, the browser, and the cloud are meshing. Applications will increasingly become sturdy hybrids, synchronizing online and offline access, delivered with richer interfaces that take advantage of local processing power and OS software.

We'll see more on this topic as the Web 2.0 Expo get under way this week.

[The_Decider]

SaaS is a model doomed to fail. No security, loss of privacy and in some cases a subscription model. Paying for software and upgrades is bad enough, getting bent over every month is another.

No business worth anything is going to trust Google.

No business with intelligent people is going to want to embrace a model that fails if Internet access goes down.

Business is already at risk for exploitation from inside and outside the company, moving everything online increases the risk exponentially. It is too easy to successfully use MIM and other attacks and most employees are not knowledgeable enough to know when and how to stop them.

There is a lot of advantages to be gained taking data online, but it comes with many pitfalls and traps that have yet to be addressed in any meaningful way.

[boratebomber]

SaaS is a model doomed to fail. Storage of data in countries with adversarial laws pertaining to privacy cedes your company's data to Patriot Act data mining or worse.

[umbrae]

Same as the other users, I do not see SaaS really kicking off. If there are free tools there will be some success since many younger people will use it. However, with ISP's struggling with bandwidth issues and management and the loss of security and privacy, I just cannot see this long term.

Most of this is fueled by Google and falling value in Windows; however, once the fad has ended we will see the desktop pick back up.

[Webconomist]

SaaS as it is today will change drastically before it succeeds. For the Web OS to truly work, it will mean these companies, like Google does already, will sell servers to Enterprises and governments. They will administer the applications themselves across the organization. Small businesses will rely on the software company since they can't afford the server appliance. So we will see a hybrid business model evolve, but you are looking at a minimum of 7 years before we see a significant change. Until then, apps like Twitter will not enter the business domain.

[tsupasat]

Doesn't this post exactly describe Microsoft's software-plus-services concept? Why not mention it?

[private user 2]

Oh I can see SaaS being used within an organization if it was run on said organizations own servers only accessible internally. Anything short of that you wind up exposing customer information to lord only knows what.

Even for an individual, it would be a cold day in a very warm place before I would put my personal financial information on somebody else's computer out of my own direct control.

I'm sorry, but on the internet paranoia is not a mental illness, it's a survival skill best cultivated and refined. There are just to many incidents of personal information being exposed to rely on "cloud computing" for truly sensitive information.

Depending on the business size, SaaS may or may not be the model. But if we are to look at the crystal ball and look seriously as what the ball is foreshadowing, I think we will discover where the software delivery or IT industry is at today is frightenly similar to where the public utility industry was back in the 1920. If we pretend the the power generators are the servers today, the home appliances that we use today as end devices, the application as the actual electricity, and the Internet as the electric power grid, I don't think it is too much to say that within 5-10 years, SaaS will be the dominate model. In the public utility industry, the shift from private on-premise power generation equipment to central power generation (the cloud) took about 10-15 years. And the driving force behind that shift were:

1. Economics: $10000 vs $0.1 to generate 1 KWh power.
2. Scalability: power lines to distribute power across massive geographical area has dramatically scaled. This is the same as the shift in broadband technology. From modem in the 90s, to DSL, to fiber in the 22nd century
3. Reliability: Centralized power generation and distribution got more and more reliable. The days of random modem disconnect days are gone. 24x7x365 always on will be the norm. Some argue that no business will be dumb enough to go with SaaS and run the risk of having the Internet as the single point of failure. I would argue that. I would say a good majority of business worldwide today run off of centralized publicly generated power. So what happens if the power plants fails, halts, or the power line got cut? Simple... **** hits the fan. But guess what, when the dust settles, we still go back to the public power. And the amazing thing is that we don't go out and but a $10000 power generator. Why? Simple. The economics far outweights the risks.

As Nicholas Carr says, "the supply of any business will always gravitate towards the most its economically efficient model."

In the end, centralized power generation model seems to have won out. So go fiture what the future holds for SaaS. If I had a million dollar, I would bet the SaaS will win at the end of the day. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But that day is not too far away in the future.

[zclayton2]

". . .why is my desktop littered with hybrid applications . . .?"

Elementary Dan, It's what works for you. All those things - OS, "Web 2.0", gadgets, widgets, etc. ad nauseum - are just tools to let you work most efficiently. You prefer some desktop presence. The Web 2.0 fringe like to depend entirely on being connected. I am a true dinosaur and want to be able to connect when I want to and everything should be on my desktop when I am not connected. It all works the way we prefer, and that's a good thing. Why ask why. . . other than its a good starter for discussion.

[dfarber]

Good comments....we are moving to hybrid world and I agree that SAAS is not doomed to fail...the technology trends and economics, and history, are behind it....