The History of SaaS

This board should find this article interesting. Unfortunately I could not find the date it was published. In any case, if the “S” curve theory is right SaaS is half way through it’s lifetime. The “S” curve is supposed to have three equal length segments: from inception to the bottom curve of the “S,” from the bottom curve to the top curve, and from the top curve to the end. According to the article SaaS first appeared around 1960 and it gained popularity (bottom curve) around 2000. If the first period was 40 year, the full lifetime is 120 years and 2020 is half way.

The History of SaaS

Software as a service, or SaaS, is a business model where customers pay to use software hosted on a remote computer.

Today, SaaS is often used interchangeably with “cloud computing”.

Whatever you call it, software as a service has an interesting history over the past 40 years. SaaS emerged with the early computers of the 1960s. Today, thanks to the internet and global communications technologies, it has never been more popular.

What do you need to know about the history of Software as a service? Find out today in our history of SaaS.

https://bebusinessed.com/history/the-history-of-saas/

Denny Schlesinger

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I put the URL into the way back machine.

Result: the page was been
saved 10 times between April 24, 2017 and June 15, 2018

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Thanks! That means it’s recent and up to date.

Denny Schlesinger

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I don’t look at it as a “Saas s-Curve” but a CRM S-Curve, identity access management S-Curve, data prep S-Curve and so on. Each of these SaaS companies are going to have their own S-Curve.

I don’t think computer leasing in the 1960s is indicative of how long ZScaler will keep going up.

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Thanks Denny

After reading most of this I am finally understanding what everyone is talking about. Very informative info. I will continue reading again.

Gayle

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I don’t think computer leasing in the 1960s is indicative of how long ZScaler will keep going up.

Exactly right. Sorry, but we’re not 60 years into this whole SaaS cycle, and there is no way the cycle will last 120 years. You might as well say the same thing about operating systems…

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I don’t think computer leasing in the 1960s is indicative of how long ZScaler will keep going up.

Of course not, not anymore than the automobile “S” curve told us when Chrysler would go bankrupt, or that ICE would prevail over steam and electric. That is not the SaaS “S” curve message.

Exactly right. Sorry, but we’re not 60 years into this whole SaaS cycle, and there is no way the cycle will last 120 years. You might as well say the same thing about operating systems…

Back in 1962 I had a project that would not fit in our mainframe’s 4 K of memory. That is not a misprint, 4,000 alphanumeric positions, they had not yet invented the “BYTE.” To solve this problem I wrote some code to allow the computer to partition the problem, what later would be called paging. At the time I did not know that I had written a crude and simple OS. By my reckoning OSs are approaching 60 years of age!

Let’s leave it at that as this will quickly degenerate into OT territory. Thanks.

Denny Schlesinger

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