Vou explicar (ou complicar um tanto) aquele papo sobre a travada do zagueiro central da MS. Ops: Pq o mundo SaaS (Software as a Service), novo horizonte e novo cenário dos novos inimigos da MS, é um dos maiores (se não o maior) desafios da empresa de Bill Gates em toda a sua história.

[Sacanagem: trata-se de um post preguiçoso. Na verdade vou listar uma coleção de citações e referências (links). Se necessário, comento alguma coisa. - zzzzzzzzz]

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Asking people to pay for the privilege of using the software isn't offering a service, it's taking a liberty.
True on-demand application vendors understand this. Conventional software vendors seem to think the world still owes them a living, just for bothering to write some software.
[Phil Wainewright]

I've always been wary of the term software-as-a-service, not only because SaaS is such an ugly acronym, but also because it conveys completely the wrong message. It gives the impression that all you need to do is take any old software package, run it up on a server in a data center, do a bit of financial engineering so customers can pay on a monthly plan, and hey presto! you've got an on-demand application. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I think it's time to coin a new acronym that nails that model much more accurately: Same old Software, as a Service. This makes it easy to identify on-demand applications that are not worthy of the name— they're just SoSaaS.
[Phil, again]

"The idea that the computing industry can simplify its offerings dramatically by having this server-equals-service approach, and having richer services, absolutely I believe in that, and we need to be at the forefront of that."
"We have Active Directory, which we are making a lot richer. There's a lot of talk about that here. And we have Passport. So we're making those very symmetric and having this federation capability be central to the architecture those things follow. We have e-mail where we have Hotmail and Exchange. We'll have hosted Exchange from some of the telcos, too. In terms of Web sites, we have some people doing hosted SharePoint now, we have Spaces, which is a low-end version of that. We'll bring those together."
"So our services have started out as very inexpensive but not feature-rich. Our servers are very feature rich. So as we bring these things together, we give you the richness and also the choice of having it as server or as a service. And that is a very big deal to us. The place we are strongest in this today is in instant messenger, where the MSN Messenger is the service, and Live Communications Server is the server. So those things are very symmetrical."
[Bill Gates]

Microsoft has come to realise that most of the value in an always-on broadband world derives from 'the cloud' - aka the Web. So if Microsoft is going to stay competitive with the likes of Salesforce.com - and keep Google and their web-based Office at bay - then they need to start the transition to the Web platform NOW.
[Richard MacManus]

Conventional application software simply isn't built for the on-demand model. It doesn't have the same economies of scale, agility and extensibility, and its implementation-centric architecture makes it incapable of delivering equivalent business value. Any vendor that takes their existing software and simply delivers it as an online service just doesn't get it— and their on-demand offering will inevitably be much slower, less flexible and more expensive than rivals that have rearchitected their applications afresh for the on-demand model.
[Phil, over]

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Sorry se soei sono.. digo, repetitivo. Usando um algoritmo parecido com o zip de Mineiro vou resumir pro seguinte: Não se trata de browserizar uma aplicação, ok? Mais: nem toda aplicação 'web' (blergh!) pode ser oferecida como um SERVIÇO. Btw: não conheço nenhuma tupiniquim!
[PV zzzzzzzz]