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Spreadsheet Assassins – A short history of "software as a service"

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Re: Spreadsheet Assassins – A short history of "software as a service"

#51

Post by Vegenoid »

dgb23 wrote: post #20
japanuspus wrote: post #4

To me, Obsidian is a perfect example of how to get SaaS-revenue without making the user captive: All data is stored in an accessible form on the user hardware, and what you pay for is sync. X-user kepano (who is a/the creator of Obsidian) has some nice insights on this _file over app_ philosophy.

This is an effective, simple solution if the application doesn't have transactional constraints and authorization. The user is in full control of the data - and that's a good thing. It becomes a bit more complicated if the data has to be in a specified shape and can only partially be authored by any individual due to authorization requirements. Having a single source of truth on a server is quite a bit easier to reas…

> if it has collaborative features or complex data constraints

It has neither of these things - it is aimed at individual (non-collaborative) use, and is intentionally very open and structureless. It is uniquely positioned to succeed with their chosen business model.

Re: Spreadsheet Assassins – A short history of "software as a service"

#52

Post by sbarre »

troyvit wrote: post #47
briHass wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone actively pushing a company away from that model to the ubiquitous M365/SharePoint/OneDrive approach, there are so many hidden costs to 'a network share'. How are you managing VPN access to file servers? How about backups/versioning? Any searching? Access control that can be easily managed by end users? Data governance, RBAC, compliance audits? BYOD/mobile device access?

> How are you managing VPN access to file servers? How about backups/versioning? Any searching? Access control that can be easily managed by end users? Data governance, RBAC, compliance audits? BYOD/mobile device access? This seems like a great idea for a SaaS product.

Yeah it's called Google Workspace.

Re: Spreadsheet Assassins – A short history of "software as a service"

#53

Post by sesm »

nikolajan wrote: post #38
bad_username wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what you pay for is sync. You also have to pay for commercial usage. And may choose to pay for early access to updates.

And the sync is locked behind their offering, if you use other software to handle the sync, you're out of luck if you want the data to be available on mobile since you can't dynamically choose the location of the vault. It's still miles ahead of other offerings when it comes to having the data be "open", but I found this limitation frustrating.

Last time I checked 3rd party plugin 'Remotely Sync' worked fine on mobile. You just create a new vault with any name you want, install the plugin, fill-in the settings and the sync will copy content of your existing vault there. After that sync will work in both ways. Personally, I use S3 backend and didn't encounter any issues so far.

Re: Spreadsheet Assassins – A short history of "software as a service"

#54

Post by padseeker »

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #28
manmal wrote: post #27

I agree with the author that working on files is preferable, if possible. But SaaS often also solve the hard problem of dissemination, and good luck syncing an excel file with 100 people via Dropbox.

Networked drives have been a thing for ages.

you can't manage permissions very well or precisely. You can give a user "read only" or "edit" but you cannot manage individual sheets or cells. Spreadsheets are great for lots of things, but sharing them with lots of people is not one of them.

Re: Spreadsheet Assassins – A short history of "software as a service"

#55

Post by _xnmw »

sbarre wrote: post #50
_xnmw wrote: post #41

Brilliant. Bravo. Well said. Look at the companies in any recent YC batch and it’s mostly just a long list of ridiculously simple SaaS ideas that anyone who knows how to use a spreadsheet doesn’t need. It’s amazing that so much money and talent in the West is dedicated to expanding rent-seeking and financing, instead of actual innovation or economic productivity. No wonder we have a housing crisis and a stock market…

And yet many of them succeed? So unless you think all their subscribers are stupid, they must see a reasonable value exchange. In the large enterprise where I work, I've often argued against building our own in-house XYZ with the position "do we want to be in the business of building and maintaining XYZ or do we want to focus on our core business?" In some cases it definitely makes sense to build something yourself,…

> unless you think all their subscribers are stupid

Ah, there’s the capitalist’s circular religious belief, if it’s profitable it must be good, and it’s good because it’s profitable.

Except some of the best things in life are not profitable, and some of the most profitable models are not good (such as Facebook/Google’s privacy invasions and the ad-driven model).

To think that subscribers pay money because they see a “reasonable value exchange” is to be completely blind to the incentives behind many big ticket software purchases. Managers pick IBM/Microsoft/Slack just so they can’t get fired for failed boondoggles or because they don’t care about anything except maintaining the status quo. Startups choose certain SaaS tools because they’re part of the same VC-funded slosh-it-around party. There’s just so many millions to be made by selling to fly-by-night startups or clueless bureaucratic enterprises or government that you don’t actually need to be innovative or useful to “make it” in todays tech world. You just need to know how to play the game. There are exceptions and true innovators of course, like OpenAI or Apple or AirBnB but those are rare.

Re: Spreadsheet Assassins – A short history of "software as a service"

#57

Post by Vegenoid »

sbarre wrote: post #50
_xnmw wrote: post #41

Brilliant. Bravo. Well said. Look at the companies in any recent YC batch and it’s mostly just a long list of ridiculously simple SaaS ideas that anyone who knows how to use a spreadsheet doesn’t need. It’s amazing that so much money and talent in the West is dedicated to expanding rent-seeking and financing, instead of actual innovation or economic productivity. No wonder we have a housing crisis and a stock market…

And yet many of them succeed? So unless you think all their subscribers are stupid, they must see a reasonable value exchange. In the large enterprise where I work, I've often argued against building our own in-house XYZ with the position "do we want to be in the business of building and maintaining XYZ or do we want to focus on our core business?" In some cases it definitely makes sense to build something yourself,…

In many cases, I would not say that the subscribers are stupid, but I would say that the company's decision to use the software was stupid. Often (usually?) the decision is made entirely by people who aren't involved in the day-to-day of the work that the tool will be used for.

The people who will be the ones using the software the most would oppose the decision if they were involved, but they weren't. They begin using the software, and it becomes clear that there are numerous problems - either bugs or, more common and insidious, incompatibility and inflexibility. But now there are high-status people in the org that have reputation staked on the success of the adoption, so they continue to shove a square peg (or just a bunch of shit) through a round hole. The software becomes embedded in the org's operations, and the costs to disentangle it become high. This is how software that does not improve things can be "successful".

I have seen this happen over and over. It is of course the fault of the org for allowing this to happen.

Re: Spreadsheet Assassins – A short history of "software as a service"

#58

Post by danjl »

I think the next thing is adding the ability to download all your data, so you could switch to a different service. There are many advantages in having companies manage your data and software over time. The pernicious part is when they make it "sticky" by preventing you from accessing the data you have created with their service. If you're able to access your data, you at least have the option of downloading it at any time and canceling the service. Whether you can use it or not in another service is a big unsolved problem. However, it is not unsolvable. Another set of companies could easily evolve that provide transfer services.

Re: Spreadsheet Assassins – A short history of "software as a service"

#59

Post by hobofan »

nikolajan wrote: post #38
bad_username wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what you pay for is sync. You also have to pay for commercial usage. And may choose to pay for early access to updates.

And the sync is locked behind their offering, if you use other software to handle the sync, you're out of luck if you want the data to be available on mobile since you can't dynamically choose the location of the vault. It's still miles ahead of other offerings when it comes to having the data be "open", but I found this limitation frustrating.

> you're out of luck if you want the data to be available on mobile since you can't dynamically choose the location of the vault

Is this possibly an iPhone-only limitation?

On Android, I can add as many vaults as I like, and choose any directory for that. I'm happily using it with a directory that is synced via Syncthing.

Re: Spreadsheet Assassins – A short history of "software as a service"

#60

Post by yard2010 »

nikolajan wrote: post #38
bad_username wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what you pay for is sync. You also have to pay for commercial usage. And may choose to pay for early access to updates.

And the sync is locked behind their offering, if you use other software to handle the sync, you're out of luck if you want the data to be available on mobile since you can't dynamically choose the location of the vault. It's still miles ahead of other offerings when it comes to having the data be "open", but I found this limitation frustrating.

I've been using Obsidian for months now. I couldn't justify the high sync cost even though the offering is nice. So I hacked a solution with the community plugin "remotely save", syncing to WebDAV. I thought it would be shoddy and after 2 days I would just go with the official solution. But no. Obsidian is a "too good to be true" kind of thing.

Also, the fact that it's just files allows me to shamelessly use Restic to back it up. No "intergrations" or "export workflows" - my data is my own (although it might be snooped by the app), I get to decide what to do with it, how and where to put it.

For me, this is the future. Imagine your data is yours. You get to enjoy all the possible ways of making value out of it, not just in some crippled ways that make other rich people richer.

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