I came across summary of Hasso Plattner’s presentation about innovation. His main point is that SaaS is the future of software (no surprise here) and he references often to Google. Google SaaS success. Google speed. Google minimalistic form. Google this. Google that.
While I agree with many of Hasso Plattner’s arguments, I think he flatten the case of Google. Sure, Google speed came into software development dictionary, but it’s a feature of the search engine, not every Google application. Sure, pure design works perfectly, but another time – for search engine. GMail, Google Reader or Google Analytics have rich, webish 2.0 design.
Google is a flagship example of SaaS success, but depending on product there are different priorities in design or innovation. Pure form and speed of Google search isn’t copied in many of other applications. And you can’t treat search engine or AdSense (which is similar case) as typical SaaS applications. Much better examples here will be Reader or Google Docs which are designed to be richer, nicer and (of course) slower.
Although I’m a big fan of on-line software, I think there’s still a significant big gap in usability between desktop applications and their web brothers and sisters. I’m yet to see web application which will be fast, functional and full of features. That’s the SaaS future, because it will allow smooth migration of users from desktops to web terminals. In other words, I’m pretty sure that we won’t be ruled by minimal design as the price paid for on-line speed. Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 path shows that people want nice and functional UI.
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