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These two comments make me see SaaS more like paying rent for housing: If we become fully dependent on a service (shelter) and then the provider (landlord) jac

These two comments make me see SaaS more like paying rent for housing: If we become fully dependent on a service (shelter) and then the provider (landlord) jacks up the price, we may be quickly forced to switch services (homes) or be out of business (homeless).

thesz 6y ago
Do not forget that in the case of cloud services you have to pay "landlord" for the stuff you move (bandwidth and volume needed to migration).
- jimkleiber 6y ago
  Ha, good point, perhaps that'd be like paying your landlord for utilities like water or electricity usage, but could also be paying for every time you have guests visit the house or you go up and down the stairs.
franklampard 6y ago
I like this analogy. I think a good idea is to sign a long term (1 year to multiple years) contract with cloud providers.
- jfim 6y ago
  A long term contract pretty much guarantees that the company will lose the institutional knowledge to run things on premises. Think about it, if the company has sysadmins that have been with the company for some years, have racked and are running most of their infrastructure, and all of a sudden they sign a long term contract with a cloud provider, why would they stay?
  - robertlagrant 6y ago
    This is a danger, although the cloud is still just VMs and networks that still need configuring and patching. Agreed people who would run physical hardware would be gone.
  - franklampard 6y ago
    There are different use cases. It’s possible that the company do not have all that infrastructure at all. I also don’t see the importance of ‘knowledge to run things on premise’ for most people. Technologies change very fast and if I can pay a reliable provider with a fixed price for the years that I intend to use it, why do I have to know how to use it? If I can hire a gardener to take care of things for a reasonable price, I don’t care if I have any knowledge.
bryanrasmussen 6y ago
unfortunately when we switch services(homes) all of our electrical devices(code) now need to be changed to work with the different way the new service(home) is wired. At this point the analogy breaks down.
- jimkleiber 6y ago
  Hmm. Maybe it's a spectrum, where some situations are like moving homes and others are like like moving cities (need to find a new dentist, doctor, etc) or moving countries (need to learn a new language, learn new laws, get new electrical outlet adapters, etc). Do you think those resonate better?
  - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
    I think as the size of the application increases and the API you are switching out increases in importance to the functioning of that application then the analogy of moving from home goes up from moving apartments(my small side project), to moving cities (my small side project turned into a startup that has been running half a year but isn't especially profitable yet), to moving countries (my application that many large organizations use with all sorts of different functionality built in to support the needs of those organizations)
    - jimkleiber 6y ago
      Well said. As it becomes more complex and intertwined, technologically and socially (employees, customers, etc), then it becomes harder to change. Thanks for helping to refine the analogy!
Joeri 6y ago
In many places landlords cannot suddenly jack up the price, but can only increase it in small amounts year by year. One could similarly imagine rent controls on digital services, where sudden price hikes are simply not allowed, and terminating the rental agreement one-sided is similarly restricted. The practical downsides of that kind of legislation would probably end up quite similar to rent controls.
- jimkleiber 6y ago
  Yes! I've found that I sometimes will keep a subscription, even if I'm not currently using it, because I've been locked in at the old price, and can feel really annoyed when they increase the price by a significant amount or percentage and force me to adopt it. About rent control, yup, it may have the ups and downs of real estate rent control :-) I'm also wondering, with physical real estate, there is a tangible limit to how many people can rent the space, whereas SaaS seems to make up arbitrary user limits. But maybe I'm wrong, and there is a limited number of users because each user has variable costs—in the housing analogy, utilities like water, space, wear & tear on the place, etc., and in the SaaS space, customer service, server space...I can't think of any more but maybe they're there...

thesz 6y ago

Do not forget that in the case of cloud services you have to pay "landlord" for the stuff you move (bandwidth and volume needed to migration).

jimkleiber 6y ago
Ha, good point, perhaps that'd be like paying your landlord for utilities like water or electricity usage, but could also be paying for every time you have guests visit the house or you go up and down the stairs.

franklampard 6y ago

I like this analogy. I think a good idea is to sign a long term (1 year to multiple years) contract with cloud providers.

jfim 6y ago
A long term contract pretty much guarantees that the company will lose the institutional knowledge to run things on premises. Think about it, if the company has sysadmins that have been with the company for some years, have racked and are running most of their infrastructure, and all of a sudden they sign a long term contract with a cloud provider, why would they stay?
- robertlagrant 6y ago
  This is a danger, although the cloud is still just VMs and networks that still need configuring and patching. Agreed people who would run physical hardware would be gone.
- franklampard 6y ago
  There are different use cases. It’s possible that the company do not have all that infrastructure at all. I also don’t see the importance of ‘knowledge to run things on premise’ for most people. Technologies change very fast and if I can pay a reliable provider with a fixed price for the years that I intend to use it, why do I have to know how to use it? If I can hire a gardener to take care of things for a reasonable price, I don’t care if I have any knowledge.

bryanrasmussen 6y ago

unfortunately when we switch services(homes) all of our electrical devices(code) now need to be changed to work with the different way the new service(home) is wired. At this point the analogy breaks down.

jimkleiber 6y ago
Hmm. Maybe it's a spectrum, where some situations are like moving homes and others are like like moving cities (need to find a new dentist, doctor, etc) or moving countries (need to learn a new language, learn new laws, get new electrical outlet adapters, etc). Do you think those resonate better?
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  I think as the size of the application increases and the API you are switching out increases in importance to the functioning of that application then the analogy of moving from home goes up from moving apartments(my small side project), to moving cities (my small side project turned into a startup that has been running half a year but isn't especially profitable yet), to moving countries (my application that many large organizations use with all sorts of different functionality built in to support the needs of those organizations)
  - jimkleiber 6y ago
    Well said. As it becomes more complex and intertwined, technologically and socially (employees, customers, etc), then it becomes harder to change. Thanks for helping to refine the analogy!

Joeri 6y ago

In many places landlords cannot suddenly jack up the price, but can only increase it in small amounts year by year. One could similarly imagine rent controls on digital services, where sudden price hikes are simply not allowed, and terminating the rental agreement one-sided is similarly restricted. The practical downsides of that kind of legislation would probably end up quite similar to rent controls.

jimkleiber 6y ago
Yes! I've found that I sometimes will keep a subscription, even if I'm not currently using it, because I've been locked in at the old price, and can feel really annoyed when they increase the price by a significant amount or percentage and force me to adopt it. About rent control, yup, it may have the ups and downs of real estate rent control :-) I'm also wondering, with physical real estate, there is a tangible limit to how many people can rent the space, whereas SaaS seems to make up arbitrary user limits. But maybe I'm wrong, and there is a limited number of users because each user has variable costs—in the housing analogy, utilities like water, space, wear & tear on the place, etc., and in the SaaS space, customer service, server space...I can't think of any more but maybe they're there...