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ARTICLE · 15 MARCH 2016

Software As A Service Is A Good?

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There has been a revolution in how software is delivered to customers. Traditionally software was licensed in a physical form.

CanadaIntellectual Property
J. Sébastien Gittens
J. Sébastien Gittens
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There has been a revolution in how software is delivered to customers. Traditionally software was licensed in a physical form. The customer traditionally received a copy of the computer program in a tangible form (disk or downloaded) and installed the software on its computer and operated the software in that manner. This also meant that the customer had to obtain and either install updates from time to time directly, or by virtue of automatic updates installed by the software supplier.

The revolution is a change to the business model. The new model has the software supplier maintain the software on its server and the customer accesses it via a network connection, commonly on the Internet. The software vendor keeps the software current and the customer now merely has to use the software. The customer never gets a tangible copy of the software but merely accesses the vendor's server to use the software. This business model is called "software as a service" or cloud

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