I subscribed to the Baffler because they write well, and to break out of my own echo chambers a bit.<p>Glad to see them on HN, but a bit disappointed in the response. They article is mostly correct in it’s lampooning.<p>Even if you disagree with points or find it ironic that they offer a subscription (btw equating producing a publication with SaaS is quite erroneous) — I think its useful to take this as a datapoint on how people outside tech see tech. That matters.
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.<p>X-user kepano (who is a/the creator of Obsidian) has some nice insights on this _file over app_ philosophy.
> The result? Some SaaS companies achieve gross profit margins of 75 to 90 percent, rivaling Windows in its monopolistic heyday.<p>Gross profit is a misleading statistic in the software industry, where almost all of the effort comes from building the thing.
The author shows notorious negative cases to invalidate a whole industry. Talks about the beauty of Excel more with a nostalgic look. If a company can replace a SaaS subscription with a process in which some employees share an Excel file, they don't need other software at all. Any software product (SaaS included) what tries to sell is a methodology or a way to do the things, condensing the know-how of an industry; whereas an Excel file most of the time means a clumsy attempt by someone to bring some order to the process. The data dependency is something governments should regulate, forcing easy portability. Of course, after years of using a specific tool it is natural to create a dependency, but it could be considered a tax from modern life as the author himself explains, it's something you cannot escape from. Or at least, the change will not involve just cancelling all your company SaaS subscriptions
There is a subscribe (in exchange for monthly payments) button under the article, an unaddressed irony. Or perhaps news outlets need money and software shops don't?
Thoma Bravo the “bridge trolls of enterprise software,”<p>they are domestic terrorists if you ask me... because for the majority of people effected by them, its terrorifying. the way they operate is not in our countries/market best interest, but only the interests of a top few, who frankly include real global terrorists as members of the fund. The US should start to investigate PE, PE is crushing the economy under its own weight of consolidation and it hurts every day people.
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.
I think the article fails to address the appeal of SaaS. The industry isn't massive for no reason and ignoring the lasting popularity makes the subject difficult to understand.<p>SaaS exists because managing software is hard. The easiest way to get money from a company is to make problems go away. SaaS means your data is stored remotely (you don't have to worry about maintaining your own servers, Databases, synchronization, liability goes to the SaaS company), updates come when they come (your internal support couldn't help, it's someone else's problem anyway), the spread sheets they are replacing were hated anyway and caused constant problems.
Although I have questions about certain points, I appreciate the perspective. I wanted to give 5 bucks. There were options for 10, 20 and “any” which goes to a select box that starts at 25. Now I can’t give anything.
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.
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 decoupled from reality.
<i>After years of dismantling Solarwinds, a ubiquitous network management software, Thoma Bravo and Silver Lake dumped $286 million of shares in December 2020, the day before the company disclosed a staggering malware breach. The “Sunburst” cyberattack exposed data from California hospitals, the Department of the Treasury, the U.S. nuclear weapons agency, and dozens of other agencies and major companies. While the root cause is still under investigation, multiple lawsuits and reports describe a culture of cost-cutting and frequent security lapses. “Typically Thoma Bravo raises prices and cuts quality, but the affected constituency group—corporate IT managers—don’t have a lot of power or agency,” Stoller writes of this precarious stalemate, with potential geopolitical implications. “Their superiors don’t want to think about a high-cost but low-probability event, especially if every other big institution would be hit as well.”</i>
It’s interesting to see my industry described from a different point of view.<p>It misses the key point of the economics of subscriptions: a single up front fee is a disincentive to the constant maintenance that delivers the single biggest piece of value to the customer, that being the continued existence of the software. Instead it creates an incentive to add lines to the marketing BS on this year’s release and prioritises new customers over existing.
Lovely; a monthly sub to an article talking about monthly subs. You have to realise I will never, ever, going to pay ‘thebaffler’ and especially an article explaining that everyone wants subscriptions in a site that gives me one article and the rest is a subscription.