“Everything as a service” is coming—but we’re not there quite yet

guest · Sep 4, 2019

“Everything as a service” is coming—but we’re not there quite yet
September 4, 2019
https://arstechnica.com/information...rvice-is-coming-but-were-not-there-quite-yet/

For the past decade, information technology and cloud computing vendors have increasingly pushed the virtualization and abstraction of every possible part of IT infrastructure further and further, turning what used to be things you bought and paid for into services that you subscribe to.
First there was software as a service, and then compute and infrastructure as a service, then platforms as a service, and now even storage and databases as a service.

It's tempting to believe that all of these could be put behind one Web portal that makes everything just a service that can be managed like cloud instances—scaled up and down on demand with a monthly bill (or charge-back)

"We've kind of had a pendulum swing from an 'Oh my gosh, everything's going to go to the cloud,'" said Edward Parker, a director and data and cloud infrastructure analyst at BTIG Research. "This is not going to be a smooth, sweeping transition."
For almost 56% of respondents to our survey, that transition has yet to even start—they reported that their companies had not begun moving apps or services outside traditional centralized data centers.
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guest · Nov 15, 2019

Somewhere in the early 21st century, we started renting everything (as a service)
November 15, 2019
https://www.theinquirer.net/inquire...ry-we-started-renting-everything-as-a-service

The move from analogue to digital meant an end to the act of owning a piece of media - whether that be a Best of Slade, Batman Begins on BluRay or that cracked copy of Windows XP you got off your mate's teenage son.

Software-as-a-Service is a classic example (of course). What it actually means is ‘software you never actually own so you have to keep paying for it over and over again because it won't just go out of date, it will just stop working altogether till you pay again'. As a service.
Digital film services are another classic example.
Each time a service closes down, it offers to let you transfer your movies, but if the new service doesn't have the rights to any of your old movie library, that's it, gone.

Then there's games. When did 'Season Passes' become a thing? And 'micropayments'?
Can you imagine anything like that being the norm during the 8-bit or 16-bit eras? They'd have laughed you all the way out of Eugene's Lair.
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And then there's the smart home. Who'd have thought that the future would mean paying £4 a month for use of your own doorbell? Or that if the company that makes the smart lights goes bust, the lights might stop working. It can happen.
I'm not saying the whole n-as-a-service culture is a bad thing. But we need to be careful that this isn't a slippery slope where we slowly erode our ownership of everything that we pay for.
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“Everything as a service” is coming—but we’re not there quite yet

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