One of the biggest kicks I’ve always gotten out of spending 5+ years in this industry are the perceptions and stereotypes that emerge about particular deployment models, applications, etc. Vendors spend so much time fighting it; customers so much time digging for the truth.

That’s why articles such as these always catch my attention. It was entertaining to watch Silicon Valley get breathless about on-demand, and is part of the natural hype cycle adjoined to every deployment model.

But while SaaS (or cloud computing) is more than just a peripheral trend, declaring it the end of on-site software is akin to saying that the Internet and social networking is going to bring an end to face-to-face meetings.

I’ve also found that stereotypes such as these usually exist for a reason, because at one point or another, they were true. In this case, myths such as these are representative of older, first-generation SaaS applications that were hindered by flexibility and scalability, issues that the next generation of SaaS models are dispelling. But with that will come a new learning curve and hype cycle, because just as SaaS’ myths are dispelled, new ones are arising over cloud computing.