Here we go again. We are barely through with the SOA hype (See SOA-or-DOA or Does my bus look big in this) before the norwegian colored it press is starting to hype “software as a service” (SaaS). Again.
Old news apparently becomes good as new when big companies decide that they are looking into changing their licensing model. It seems that Microsoft is looking hard at the online office productivity tools made by Google.
The journalist then added some stuff of his own. In just a short while, all our applications are going to be online applications. We won’t store stuff locally any more, and we will rent our applications. Hosting your own mail server is going to be a thing of the past. If only I hadn’t heard this before. There are still lots of problems that need to be overcome before we end up leasing our productivity applications – even if I am writing this in an online editor in my blog tool, which incidentally is also free.
The hype has been here before under a different acronym. In 2001, ASPs were going to take over the market. I guess the half-life of a journalist in the colored IT press is shorter than six years, which means we now get a new round of the same hype with different acronyms attached.
There are still no critical questions being asked. And it seems that we like it. Someone has to buy these rags.
Whatever happened to critical journalism? Why are there no magazines out there that can actually provide me with pre-chewed overview information I can trust? The only IT magazines I have been able to lay my hands on seem to be tabloids with all the journalism removed.
In the non-IT world, there are some exceptions. The New York Times seems to give a fairly balanced view on american issues. The local newspaper “Morgenbladet” also seems to employ journalists that are worth something. So far, in the IT area, I have found nothing. Nada.
I am afraid this is how things are going to continue. We are still going to be subjected to waves of hype whenever some journalist wannabe wants to sell more copies. I would love to be proven wrong, though.
