What is On demand?..in short

What is "on-demand"? Why is it better than the alternative? In fact, what is the alternative? This is a short post on what on-demand means and why it's entering the spotlight in the future of software.

Imagine this if you will. A dentist starts up a dentistry business. He (or she) decides that he will be the best dentist in town and in 1 month he will have 1000 patients signed up. For this feat he needs a good software that can keep track of his patients and what work has been done on whom, what are their payment balances, etc, etc. He needs his secretaries, assistants, and himself to be able to get to this data easily. He's got two options:

Option A:
Go out, find yourself an off she shelf software such as Microsfoot Dentist Pro [$$$],

• get an IT company to install it on each computer [$$$], set up the database [$$$], etc [$$$]. And there you go! All fine and dandy.
  
• What if he gets new employees? ... new computer [$$$], new geek to install software [$$$], etc.
  
• How about support, if the computers go down, or if the software doesn't work, or if there's not enough space to store his beautiful-smiled patients? Call the manufacturer or the IT geeek [$$$].
  
• What if Dentist Pro no longer meets his daily requirements? New software [$$$], or new version must be installed on all computers [$$$].
  

That's [$$$]^9, not that anyone's counting.

Option B:
Enter the software "On-Teeth software for Dentists" [powered by "Salesforce.com" (or any equivalent company)]. This is on-demand software. The dentist pays per user that uses it [$].

• No one to set up the database, no one to set up and install the software. He can also access this from home, from work, from anywhere over the internet.
• What if he gets new employees? He just adds one subscription to the on-demand software [$]
• How about support, if the computers go down, or if the software doesn't work, or if there's not enough space to store his beautiful-smiled patients? The on-demand company handles all that in the subscription price.
• What if Dentist Pro no longer meets his daily requirements? New versions are updated to the on-demand software automatically. And communities such as AppExchange (by Salesforce) offers many add-on apps that he might be able to use to fit his new requirements

That's [$]^3. But who's counting?