Check today's edition of the New York Times: it runs a story on SalesForce.com, the next great Silicon Valley hero story in 2004, competing with the tale of the Google boys.
If you have never had the chance to meet its founder and CEO, Marc Benioff, then you've missed something. He usually sports anything but a suit and a tie, and more usually fancies a Hawaian shirt. His words are just as straightforward as his looks, as he dismisses the future of software companies. In his view, only on-demand software will be of any interest to corporate customers. Indeed, why pay millions of €/$ for a Siebel implementation (his company focus is around CRM, and he competes with them), when you can rent the software per user at less than €20/month. And everything comes included (aside from a real small setup fee).
Benioff has a point: will be the business model of the software industry still be downloadable items, or just a pay-as-you-go model ?
Recent history has shown that ROI on large software implementations (ERP, etc.) has not been achieved. This could really make a business case for on-demande software, for once.
And going back to our consumer space, do you think that iTunes will keep on "selling" music at $0.99 (actually there was a story yesterday, that the majors are forcing Apple to upgrade to $1.25/track - A number of reports confirm this, although Apple has denied this rumour), or turn to "renting" a track, like a personalised radio? A streaming iTunes model would make it easier for music operators to make money, because the rights for streaming music are much lower than for downloable tracks...