Back in the dot-com boom the concept of Application Service Provider (ASP) was introduced as a new breed of software delivery. ASPs got the application outsourcing business rolling by hosting third-party, client-server or early web applications. This was a new delivery model where till then only in-house applications were known to the industry. ASP took the full advantage of internet: - to be miles away from the end user. Applications are hosted somewhere in the internet and managed remotely. The users use it through the web forms. The enterprises need not acquire or maintain the software they can use it for a subscription fee. This model also got burst along with the dot-com bubble. Though it was a revolutionary business model the lack of maturity of tools and standards were the real villains in this story. In other words the idea was a forerunner of the technology. Now we are again started talking about Software as a Service but with a basic difference, this time the foundation is stronger. Broadband connections are faster and cheaper now. Also the Webservices and Web 2 standards are more matured and industry proven. These improvements helped to host applications which are on par with owned applications in terms of usability and speed. Also the other ‘*aaS‘models helped to achieve elasticity which in turn ended up in effective usage of available resources. The emergence of multi-geo organizations also accelerated this paradigm shift.
Now let us discuss how they differ in their outlook. Despite the fact that the medium is same (Internet) ASP is targeting the delivery, where as the SaaS is focusing more on the service aspect of the product. In ASP the provider is someone like a middleman who packages and host third party applications in a data centre for the use of end customer. The original application may not be designed for hosting it. But the new breed, SaaS, is specialized and designed specific to be used as a hosted service. They are generic services as opposed to customer specific bulky applications in the ASP era. Since ASP applications were specific the maintenance cost was high. Another visible difference is in the billing granularity. ASP had a model on per server or per user. But SaaS can bill by CPU cycles, bytes transferred. This facilitates scaling a system
ASP was not proved to be a grant success though the concept was novel where as SaaS is getting momentum in the industry. Let us see what changes the mindset of the decision makers to embrace software services. I could see both financial and technological reasons behind this shift. The turbulence in the global economy is one of the compelling reasons for the CIOs to use a rented service to run the show. Another reason is the ever-changing technology and continues business optimizations. Every enterprise has to rapidly implement new business ideas to survive in the market. To build a quick solution from the limited existing IT resources are near to impossible. So the solution is to rent a service. All of these developments, coupled with an IT outsourcing habit , caused many CIOs to relinquish their company's IT assets to a SaaS, which was not the case a couple of decades ago.
Though the objectives and technology stacks differ, I still like to believe SaaS is a successor of ASP with technological and business model improvements. I think at least conceptually both give similar outcome to the end user though the usage pattern may differ. I like to see more perceptions on this.
Now let us discuss how they differ in their outlook. Despite the fact that the medium is same (Internet) ASP is targeting the delivery, where as the SaaS is focusing more on the service aspect of the product. In ASP the provider is someone like a middleman who packages and host third party applications in a data centre for the use of end customer. The original application may not be designed for hosting it. But the new breed, SaaS, is specialized and designed specific to be used as a hosted service. They are generic services as opposed to customer specific bulky applications in the ASP era. Since ASP applications were specific the maintenance cost was high. Another visible difference is in the billing granularity. ASP had a model on per server or per user. But SaaS can bill by CPU cycles, bytes transferred. This facilitates scaling a system
ASP was not proved to be a grant success though the concept was novel where as SaaS is getting momentum in the industry. Let us see what changes the mindset of the decision makers to embrace software services. I could see both financial and technological reasons behind this shift. The turbulence in the global economy is one of the compelling reasons for the CIOs to use a rented service to run the show. Another reason is the ever-changing technology and continues business optimizations. Every enterprise has to rapidly implement new business ideas to survive in the market. To build a quick solution from the limited existing IT resources are near to impossible. So the solution is to rent a service. All of these developments, coupled with an IT outsourcing habit , caused many CIOs to relinquish their company's IT assets to a SaaS, which was not the case a couple of decades ago.
Though the objectives and technology stacks differ, I still like to believe SaaS is a successor of ASP with technological and business model improvements. I think at least conceptually both give similar outcome to the end user though the usage pattern may differ. I like to see more perceptions on this.
Posts
