SaaS

Software as a Service is a solution for businesses to use a hosted solution for their software needs instead of running local copies of similar software. This allows the company to focus on core business and let another company focus on what they do best - software and IT management. With typical software the vendor sells the product and then it is up to the customer to manage the installs and update the product. With SaaS all of that is taken care of on the vendor side since the software is hosted and run off of their servers. When the client logs in they will automatically get the latest version. The original player in this field and one of the largest is saleforce.com. They are a CRM provider.

There is a free service called ajaxWindows that is a java and javascript based web application that functions and feels like a virtual OS. It looks very similar to Microsoft windows and allows users to fully customize their desktop. It is integrated with google docs as well as zoho. These web applications open inside of ajaxWindows which all works inside of the browser. It really does make the browser a platform. It does not matter if you are on a windows or mac computer.

Google docs is a wonderful set of web applications. I have used it many times to collaborate with team mates on trivial to complex group projects. It makes it easy to collaborate and it keeps a full record of each edit to the document. On one document we had nearly 1000 versions and it was easy to view and revert to any of them.

One of the biggest drawbacks to SaaS for most people is their worry about reliability. Since the service is hosted the client is completely reliant on their internet connection as well as the server health of the host, both of which the client has no control over. Google has tried to tackle this problem with their gears software which allows some offline functionality of web applications. It keeps a local copy of any changes and then when the internet connection is restored a sync is performed.