SOFTWARE

Software as a Service overview

I wanted to start my post today with this excellent YouTube video.  So, if you are of the personality type that just skips that sort of thing and goes straight for the point, please STOP and take 2 minutes to watch it…now. 

Thanks!

Talk about evolution over a short period of time.  Think back to the floppy disk.  Are you old enough to remember those early days?  Sometimes the instructions to tell your hardware, the computer, what to do ended up on multiple little diskettes.  And boy was the install slow compared to today.  But it was a start  look where it has already evolved.

The YouTube video shows another emerging trend.  One where you don’t even install the software on your computer, but pay a monthly fee to access it.  One of my points in wanting you to watch that at the beginning is to highlight my point.  Back in the day, we were not thinking of software as a service…at all.  But somebody eventually did and it’s catching on.  And if that was the case then, where in the world is all of this going 20 to 30 years in the future?

Clearly, when it comes to what’s instructing our computers (include iPhone, Droid etc in that group of hardware requiring software to tell it what to do), we are still in the baby stage.  I wouldn’t say infancy…but clearly not teenager or young adult stage.

And then there’s all the various types of software that has arisen from customer demands for various types of devices.  One example of this is “firmware.”  Most people don’t have a clue what it is.  They’ve just heard it or seen it mentioned.  And if you’re interested, you can learn more from Wikipedia’s article when you click on SOFTWARE.  You’ll get more of an overview there, not hard core details.  But it’s good to get the big picture of software.

It really is amazing the software that you can find nowadays.  Besides the operating system for your computer, I immediately think of all the various GAMES that are available.  Software is what makes those games work on your computer (device).  Today, there’s a full line of educational software.  You can learn a language, just about any language, using a variety of companies’ software.  There’s productivity software, exercise software, even cooking software.  For businesses there’s accounting software.  You can’t forget the computer protection software aimed at defending against viruses and cyber-attacks.

Consumers are what’s driving all of this.  Faster, more customized, smaller, portable…all of these things are being driven by consumers and businesses who are willing, even in tough economic times, to ante up with their cash and get what they want.  Chances are what you have today in the way of software will be way out of date in a few years.  Okay, even a year from now.  Yep, it’ll still work.  But someone has an idea that they’re working on that might just send everything we now know back to zero…recreating a whole new way of thinking about software and how we actually put it to use.