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Coining a term: SaaS-turbation

Software-as-a-Service or pointless self-servitude? You decide.

Dave Rosenberg Co-founder, MuleSource
Dave Rosenberg has more than 15 years of technology and marketing experience that spans from Bell Labs to startup IPOs to open-source and cloud software companies. He is CEO and founder of Nodeable, co-founder of MuleSoft, and managing director for Hardy Way. He is an adviser to DataStax, IT Database, and Puppet Labs.
Dave Rosenberg

As I parsed through the multitude of blog postings about Live Documents, a service that is not yet live, doesn't offer screenshots and no one seems to have actually seen, I started to think we all got duped into writing about it. Admittedly, it was a slow news week but when Dan Farber doesn't have an account something is screwy.

I started to ponder if all of these pseudo-applications that are just online versions of not great desktop applications are just software onanism.

Does the world need an online version of MS Office 2007, a product that has not been well recieved? Do we need Siebel OnDemand? Or, is this all just an attempt at staying relevant while a few companies actually take advantage of the on-demand delivery model and offer innovative new products?

SaaS-turbation (Noun)
Browser based, unsatisfying, on-demand version of a desktop application