For a long time, telecom operators have been regarded as a potential player in the SaaS (Software as a Service) model, a way of delivering applications by hosting them on a data center and making them accessible over IP networks. In 2006, Dr. Matthew Lucas posted an article Editorial: Software as a Service (SaaS) and the Telecoms  in which he lists his top 10 reasons why telecoms should care about SaaS. It's worth a read.
 

A point I would like to make is that this approach to distributing applications not only allows operators to leverage their network infrastructure and sales channels but also one of their major skills, to deliver services within a SLA.

According to a release from Gartner in November 2009, SaaS is regarded as a growing business. In the last few months some of the major European operators have made movements in this sector and we see how the existing portfolio of enterprise operator-run value added services increases with new this new approach. For instance, Deutsche Telekom is reinforcing their position and is set to take over SAP European software business based on news in September 2009.
 

The SaaS model is not only restricted to large enterprises. Last year, Telefónica entered into an agreement with NEC for a Software as a Service platform that will target small and mid sized companies.

Let’s see what happens in 2010 with SaaS. I expect that it will continue to gain momentum.

Back to the future…

I started in the computer industry in the late ‘70’s. I didn’t work on mainframes, the norm in that era. I spent most of my waking hours on these new things called microcomputers. If you wrote software for a microcomputer, you were in absolute control. It was an era when could do anything you wanted or, more to the point, were capable of designing. True to the Wild West attitude of the time, before I graduated high school I owned a company which wrote, among other things, personal accounting software for Radio Shack’s TRS-80s. You had to pick your bets and choose which machine you wanted your software to run on. When machines such as IBM’s PC came along, we had to decide whether the device would take off and, if so, whether it would appeal to the demographics we were going after. In short, we spent our time porting our software so it would run on whatever was selling to our target market at any given time. In all cases you had to craft your application to get the most out of the device you were running on.

So why am I babbling about the past?