Using McLuhan’s tetrad, Solid State Drives (SSDs) can be viewed as an emerging technology.
They enhance our experience with computers by making our interactions more real time. The SSD's speed of access for retrieving data and avoiding the time it takes to wait for the disk to rotate for the next read (latency), makes things like Windows boot time much more acceptable. The potential for reliability over a mechanical hard disk is also a great plus. Both should drive SSDs to replace standard hard disks.

The speed of access is important as it must compare with the human memory's speed of access. The amount of storage and clarity of images already surpasses our memory's ability. In the future storage in the clouds could make local computer storage obsolete.

SaaS, SaaP, and Saps

The future of software is currently wavering between two poles.

- Software as a Product (SaaP) is the historic method of providing applications. As a simple example, you buy Microsoft Word or download OpenOffice for those who are already angry that I mentioned a Microsoft product. You download the software, install it, and periodically update it. You may need someone to maintain it for you. I handle that task for my family and many friends.

- Software as a Service (SaaS) is a newer means of software distribution. You pay by use or amount of traffic. The software is automatically updated, running, and maintained. Think of it like renting a house. Someone else cuts the grass, updates are done without you needing to do them, and the owner handles problems. Stevenson (2008) put it this way: "SaaS is about hiding the essential software-ness of Software."

Let's look at an example: a Learning Management System (LMS). This will be a "little" over-simplified but should help show the differences between SaaS and SaaP.

Moodle uses SaaP. It is widely used and appreciated by many educational and corporate entities.

What are Moodle problems as a SaaP? When the update from Moodle 1.9 to Moodle 2 occurred there were many users crying foul in the forums. The storage changed in a dramatic way to the concept of repositories, there was no easy way to migrate courses and linked data, and installation problems hindered the development of organizations.

If Moodle used SaaS, the developers would have worked out the migration and storage issues. They would have migrated the user's courses and data. Teachers wouldn't need to be IT specialists or programmers. If you don't think this is true look at the forums, for example:
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=91496

However, the problem, beside the architectural changes needed, are the cost and support issues. It would require a cloud provider willing to be very inexpensive. It would require the support and development staff to work on a sandbox together.
There is also a personal downside to SaaS. The changes are made and a new release installed without your actions. You wake up and a new release is running. The learning curve and time to productivity can be high. If you don't like Word 2010, you could still keep running Word 2007.

In a SaaS world, there is only one release running and everyone gets it.
In addition, Moodle is very customizable as SaaP. SaaS would require a Browser-like add-in feature that allows the modification and enhancement of the LMS features.

Stevenson, D. (2008). Has SaaS already become passe? Retrieved from
http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/original-thinking/has-saas-already-become-passe-26965