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How much of point 1 is because there's been a shift to hosted software? When the norm is hosted software + regular updates/on-going development, then the backin

• TimJYoung 8y ago
  I don't know the answer to that, but SAAS sites that take a bunch of investor money, burn through it, and then abruptly shut down probably aren't helping with those concerns. However, what I do know is that SAAS is one of the most important advances we've seen for ISVs in the last 20 years. SAAS can be a great leveler for software companies because a) it prevents piracy, which is big problem with desktop software, b) it's generally easier to develop and deploy, and c) it is universally available to all types of client machines. The main problem that I see with SAAS is that dominant players have used it to lock customers into their service by making it hard to get at their data or move from one service to the other, but I'm not sure that this was less prevalent with desktop software. We've sold embedded database engine products for years now, and we constantly encountered vendors that wanted ways to lock down their databases so that customers couldn't casually access their own data using an ODBC driver, etc.