The death of shrink-wrapped software
ASPs are distributing software as a service over the Internet, much like your utility company distributes electricity over electrical lines. This trend is catching on in many areas, especially where the cost and complexity of software is high, such as payroll, accounting and search engines. Now, instead of installing your own payroll system, you can contact an ASP to access their payroll software over the Internet, pay them an annual subscription and let them worry about the hassles of keeping the servers and the software up and running.
As a veteran of the software industry, I remember the days when we had to make sure the software was well tested and the master CD or floppy disks created, then sent to production. Next, these beautiful shrink-wrapped boxes -- companies spent a lot on package design in those days -- were shipped to distributors.
Fifteen days later, when the first customers got their copies, they discovered bugs that should have been obvious during the testing process but were overlooked by QA and engineering in the last sleep-deprived hours of completing an upgrade. We recalled software, created new CDs and started the process all over again.
The costs of these mishaps were prohibitive to companies -- kind of like Ford having to recall a slew of exploding cars.
The ASP model alleviates that nightmare. We now create software as before and publish it on our servers; our customers will be able to use it the next time they fire up their browsers.
Because we can publish feature by feature, we can test feature by feature, and that sort of testing is more effective. If something was overlooked by an engineer, it can be fixed or added just as fast. For example, it took our company, Atomz.com, a few hours to add a Greek dictionary to our search service and make it available to customers. It made our Greek customers happy, and it cost us nothing in upgrade channel costs. The cost of shipping CDs to our 50,000-plus customers would have been higher than the cost of an entire server farm.
What I can't understand is ASP companies announcing "Version 2" of their software -- the protocols of a dying culture. Somebody should tell them that customers don't really care what version your software is, just whether it does the job.
Delivering software in the ASP model is by and large so much cheaper than our shrink-wrapped competitors that taking a sale from them in a competitive situation is like taking candy from a baby.
And the customers benefit. They get the software they want, at a much lower cost. Imagine a world where you wait weeks rather than years for huge upgrades.
Saloni Howard-Sarin is a 14-year veteran of the software industry and the vice president of marketing for Atomz.com. Before coming to Atomz.com, Howard-Sarin built the Software Technology Evangelism team at Sun Microsystems Inc. and held several key positions at ACIUS and ACI France.