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Yes, but my point is that I can do a lot of stuff that isn't just DCops work; in fact it's a very small part of my job. I handle all the infrastructure to inclu

Yes, but my point is that I can do a lot of stuff that isn't just DCops work; in fact it's a very small part of my job. I handle all the infrastructure to include cloud and some managed services as well. Kinda the nature of a small company - you just do what needs doing.

throwanem 2y ago
Sure, I get that, but my point is that most small businesses aren't going to have or want someone with that set of skills. Those in and around the tech industry will, sure, but that isn't most small businesses. And selfhosted equivalents of SaaS officeware packages really aren't the sort of thing that can be reliably set up and managed on a "do what needs doing" basis - not because most people can't learn, but because starting from what you know as a user that's quite a bit of learning, and time thus better spent on any of the other forty dozen things that always want doing to keep a small shop afloat. It would be nice if the tooling really was simple enough that wasn't so, but despite considerable effort to make it so from Sandstorm among others over quite a long time, as far as I know no one's had notable success in achieving that. Hence the rise and continued prominence of SaaS providers, who abstract all of that effort behind an SLA and a monthly fee. I agree with the criticism of SaaS platform behavior at the head of this thread. What I think the commenters on that side of the discussion are missing or maybe ignoring, is that much of the value a SaaS offering provides is in not having to (pay someone to) administer that stuff yourself - and that, considered separately from the question of how providers behave, "all you have to think about is 'pay us and use our stuff'" is in the general case a strong value proposition.
- silverquiet 2y ago
  Yes, I was thinking about the software world really. I work for a small SaaS vendor so we have the skills to develop and host our offering. We are indeed toying with AI (because who isn't?) to see about adding features, but one of our requirements would be that it is self-hosted as well because we work in medical IT. I believe that's one place where strong privacy laws and at least the idea that patients own their data (doctors don't seem to be super onboard on that) can put some guardrails on what companies can do.

throwanem 2y ago

Sure, I get that, but my point is that most small businesses aren't going to have or want someone with that set of skills. Those in and around the tech industry will, sure, but that isn't most small businesses. And selfhosted equivalents of SaaS officeware packages really aren't the sort of thing that can be reliably set up and managed on a "do what needs doing" basis - not because most people can't learn, but because starting from what you know as a user that's quite a bit of learning, and time thus better spent on any of the other forty dozen things that always want doing to keep a small shop afloat. It would be nice if the tooling really was simple enough that wasn't so, but despite considerable effort to make it so from Sandstorm among others over quite a long time, as far as I know no one's had notable success in achieving that. Hence the rise and continued prominence of SaaS providers, who abstract all of that effort behind an SLA and a monthly fee. I agree with the criticism of SaaS platform behavior at the head of this thread. What I think the commenters on that side of the discussion are missing or maybe ignoring, is that much of the value a SaaS offering provides is in not having to (pay someone to) administer that stuff yourself - and that, considered separately from the question of how providers behave, "all you have to think about is 'pay us and use our stuff'" is in the general case a strong value proposition.

silverquiet 2y ago
Yes, I was thinking about the software world really. I work for a small SaaS vendor so we have the skills to develop and host our offering. We are indeed toying with AI (because who isn't?) to see about adding features, but one of our requirements would be that it is self-hosted as well because we work in medical IT. I believe that's one place where strong privacy laws and at least the idea that patients own their data (doctors don't seem to be super onboard on that) can put some guardrails on what companies can do.