Bert Armijo or 3tera wrote about Trendmapper, and in his opening sentence, he wrote:
The beauty of the Internet is software becomes so easy to use that you can hundreds of useful little services without thinking about them… until they’re gone.
The idea of Software as a Service (SaaS) holds the key to Web 2.0. Instead of buying half dozen of software packages to handle everyday needs, you just use applications delivered over the Internet. Nothing needs to be stored on your local hard drive, all upgrades are taken care of, and everything belongs to you can be accessed from anywhere with a browser and Internet connection.
There are so many useful web-based applications out there, and even TechCrunch can’t list them all. People grow to depend on them — imagine a day without Gmail or Del.icio.us? However, the concern Bert has raised is, what if they are suddenly gone?
Long time computer users would have suffered enough pain to remember keeping regular backups of their treasured data on their harddrive. How many of you actually backup everything in your Gmail account, or your photos on Flickr, or your bookmarks in Del.icio.us, or your blog posts on Live Space? Sure, the likeliness of Google, Yahoo! and MSN fold out of sudden is very slim. But what about the smaller players, where you trust your data to them equally?
For example, if you are a Kiko calendar user, wouldn’t you be worried when the site was auctioned eBay? It’s great that Tucows bought them, but what if the auction passed-on and fall through? Well, there’s also Google Calendar that you can move to, but where is that “import from my Kiko account” button that let you recover all your appointments?
As the bubble is more inflated, you’ll likely to see many more declared dead. It is easy for a basement operation to declare defeat, but what about their users? What about the time they spent on your services? What about their valuable data?
I guess moving to SaaS is inevitable. At work we are also delivering software applications via the ASP model, as it is much much easier in maintenance. We too have been challenged with similar questions — “Is our data safe in your hands?” “Will database be provided if we terminate the service?” We have to again and again assure them that “we are backed by a listed company with international operations.” “all your data is safe with us.” etc.
I guess the same when we approach a Web 2.0 company. If you intend to use this service for a few years, instead of just taste-testing the service, then you gotta ask the same question — do you trust this company or organisation over the time span that you intend to use the service?
These days, I usually only rely on services provided by the big boys like Google, Yahoo, MSN or Amazon. There are fancier, more powerful and more “Web 2.0″‘ish implementations out there, which I enjoyed playing with. But no commitment unless I can be firmly assured.
Your concern about data is real. In fact, even before I read your post I was wondering if Eirik at Trendmapper would be able to extract a few pieces of data and email it to me.
However, this isn’t a phenomenon unique to SaaS. Your photos aren’t any easier to archive at home than on Flickr. I’ve got five computers at home with storage ranging from 40GB (it’s an old machine) to 1TB. It’s impossible to backup modern systems efficiently without creating a redundant disk. Actually, with the latest USB NAS head-ends it’s pretty simple.
That’s the point really, making it simple. Scaling SaaS applications is incredibly hard and as an industry we’ve really done little to build systems that make it easier.
One correction: Before we put up the auction we told our users what was happening and posted an account delete function and an export to iCal function. The latter can be used to easily move your whole calendar to a competing service such as Google Calendar. I did that exact thing with my girlfriends Kiko account and it was very simple.
With that out of the the way, I would wholeheartedly agree with your assessment. As someone who runs a Web 2.0 SaaS (slimtimer.com) coming up with a solution to the data lock-in problem weighs heavy on my mind these days. And I think this concern will become a big story in the next few months as the churn of sites going under really ramps up. In the end I think it will come down to having standards for data in a certian vertical and allowing your customers to move their accounts freely between services, but will competitors work together like that? Will customers feel more secure with things like that in places or will the utility go over their heads?
I’m not sure but it’s something I’m working on for my vertical because I think there are a whole lot more desktop users that can be converted once you have systems like this in place (in comparison to the smaller number of early adopters already using your services).
Rich
Bert,
I think you have missed the point. The solution to my issue here is not making scaling simple. Your NAS back up system with RAID drives, or even home grown SAN won’t be anything useful, if the house got burnt down out of sudden. No matter how simple the backend solution is, you just cannot build houses on sand.
Sure. The service provide can build its SaaS solution with scalable framework that you are trying to sell, but from a user point of view, I would rather trust my data with someone who is likely to be in business for years (regardless their claimed technical superiority).
Richard,
Sorry for using Kiko as an example, as (1) it was recent (2) didn’t have anything in my mind at the time of writing. Thanks for the correction.
And indeed I think you are on the right track. What needs to be simplified is the process for users to export data. An assurance for the users that they are still in control of what they have created. Common data format like iCal also helps, so users can bring their data to different vendors.
Still, this kind of “fear” does not apply to everyone, and I might just be one of those being more paranoid.