On Moving Toward Software Rentals

CowboyRobot writes "ACM Queue has an article about the emergence of a service-oriented model of software delivery, supported by the W3C, IBM, HP, and Microsoft. They already have their acronyms down: WSDL (Web Services Description Language), UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration), and WSFL (Web Services Flow Language). The article primarily covers the three phases of negotiating, ending with actual service delivery."

Comments

Re:"Service Delivery"

[flacco]

will consist of deployment of a crappy too-thick-to-be-thin client, with poor response time, and broken widgets.

or it could be a simple web app with some enhancements/extensions as envisioned by the whatwg, behaving as browser users expect it to behave, designed around internet response times, and thus providing response times that browser users are accustomed to.

currently i'm moving a client from a godforsaken ms-access app that i wrote many years ago to a web-based application that i intend to host on my own hosted virtual server. no more installation issues to deal with, no more relinking tables every time i ship a new version, no more ms-access-on-the-client requirement to deal with... when i have a new version ready i just upload it to the server and we're done.

i *am* looking forward to whatwg-like extensions, though, because the user interface is taking a step backward, from the user's perspective. whatwg should address some of those shortcomings.

The vendor will claim that it is due to either 1) client-side misconfigurations, or 2) unanticipated variations in the environment,

further argument for web applications. but again - must... improve... interface... !

both of which will be ironed out via a Professional Services contract accompanying the software "delivery". The end result will be the creation of numerous roles at the client's expense to "manage" and "coordinate" the software delivery, frustration at the end-user level, raises and kudos for the middle managers who jumped on the bandwagon, and fat wallets on the part of the shovelware designers.

unless a competitor comes along and says "why are you messing around with all that complicated proprietary not-thin-enough client technology for? here is my alternative, which is standards-compliant and requires only a web browser to use." (granted, perhaps a mozilla-based browser, but you'd just be doing them a favor anyway if they're not using one already).

go whatwg, go!