The More Things Change…

One hears a lot of hype these days about cloud computing, on demand computing, and software as a service (SaaS).  Depending on what a particular entity is trying to sell, one may hear arguments that each of these terms define subtle differences in the services being offered.  Well, in my black and white world, they can all be summed up by one term that says it all….

Time-Sharing!

While it is indeed true that advances in hardware, software and networking technology have resulted in an end user experience that makes the original mainframe-based time-sharing look tired and ancient, it’s stll time-sharing.  All we’ve done is tarted up the pig with shiny lipstick and more fashionable clothing.  And increased its oink rate over the years.