Everything old is new again.

This couldn’t be more true than in the examination of Software as a Service.

If you start at the beginning of mainframe computing and the first remote log-in (some time in the 1940s between Dartmouth college and Bell Labs in New York), you get the first example of accessing computational functionality.

In the ‘80s, with the arrival of more computing power in smaller footprint, the concept of client-server came along. This was still the era of LAN/WAN and some connectivity to the Internet via TCP/IP.

The ‘90s kicked the concept of the network as the computer into full gear. While at Sun Microsystems then, I was responsible for marketing the Java technology, which provided the first universal programming environment for writing web-based applications that could run on any computer anywhere.

The first instantiation of cloud computing came about at the end of the ‘90s and early 2000 era with Application Service Providers. This was more the equivalent of private hosting. In other words, they took applications that you had been running internally within the four walls of your business and located the hardware and the software off-premise as a dedicated application for your business.