Commoditization of Technology
As technology advances, the problems solved by computing have become increasingly more complicated. Each generation of software has created, adapted to, or leveraged new tools which commoditize some functionality that is common across a wide range of existing systems and products.
We no longer write code to coordinate transactions between multiple databases. Likewise, we no longer write code to manage sockets or HTTP request queues, and many other things necessary to build distributed systems. Web servers allow developers to effectively build scalable, multi-threaded applications without the complexity required 20 years ago.
As the world became “connected”, security became crucial. After a few short years of nearly everyone having their own application user database, security was quickly commoditized. Our legacy code was replaced first by frameworks that included code and database templates that replaced customer code. This was eventually replaced by open standards from companies like Microsoft, Apple, and Facebook. Today, no one writes code for user authentication and authorization in cloud-native applications.
The world of technology is ripe for the next layer up the stack to be commoditized. SaaS publishers encounter similar problems regardless of the platform they build and regardless of the tooling they use. Having worked with multiple B2B SaaS companies, I’ve seen the shortcomings of many of the current platforms and of the “commodities” in technology. Application settings work great for single companies but fall short when you are supporting 10 companies or 10,000 companies, each with their own values.
There are many other examples, but it seems like the SaaS world is ready for a revolution…