SaaS equals mainframe, right?
IBM/360 series mainframe detail (credit: Pete Clouston) “SaaS is like returning to the days when the mainframe ruled – a hosted application reached via terminals” Fair assertion, right? Nah…I’d contend SaaS (Software as a Service) and a mainframe are two quite distinct – and different – models. Nowadays, SaaS and the modern mainframe co-exist, though distantly. The dumb terminals have gone for good as the modern mainframe has embraced more recent technologies such as virtualization – interestingly that being one of the economic enablers of Cloud infrastructure. From hereon though, this post asserts there’s a lot to differentiate between SaaS and the ‘dumb terminal’ mainframe model of yesteryear. Mainframe characteristic # 1: proprietary hardware and software Now – open web standards aid connections to the Cloud, removing reliance upon particular software or hardware flavors, in places optionally augmented by open source code. Then – proprietary ...