Once upon a time, not very long ago, it was a different experience buying software. Take QuickBooks, the popular small business accounting system, for example.
Back in the day, you would go to the office supply store, or order the software online and it would be delivered to you in a box. You would install the software on your desktop computer or on your server. Maybe you’d need some assistance. Sometimes you’d ask for training. But other than that the software was up and running. You can still do that today, if you want. You could purchase QuickBooks Premier for about $300 and install it on just about any Windows 7 or 8 machine. But that’s getting tougher and tougher to do. Like Intuit’s other desktop products, QuickBooks Premier is now all the way at the bottom of the products page, overshadowed by its QuickBooks Online offerings.
Can you blame Intuit? Of course not. QuickBooks is a fine product and Intuit is a fine company. Intuit is no different than any other large software manufacturer intent on growing profits. It’s pushing the cloud to its customers. And small businesses, like it or not, are definitely migrating to the cloud. According to Steve King, a partner at Emergent Research, which tracks technology use by small firms “…almost 37% of small businesses are ‘fully adapted’ to cloud-based applications.” He expects that to increase to 78% of small businesses by 2020.
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