Buying software through a conventional licensing agreement can be expensive and restrictive but, as Paul Stevens reports, a new generation of web-native software can be hosted remotely and accessed via a browser, with cost-effective payments made on a monthly per-user basis.
DOS, Windows and Apple Macintosh software applications used to be distributed on floppy discs then, as technology moved on, CD-Roms took over. More recently, with broadband internet connections becoming commonplace, direct downloads have been more widely used. But in all three cases, the software had to be installed on a local computer or a server situated in the same building as the user(s).
