We were recently asked how Situational Software relates to the industry's wholesale move towards on-demand, service-driven software architectures. Excellent question! To answer it, let's first look at what vendors mean when they use the term:

• Siebel offers "CRM OnDemand" (with their separate website at www.crmondemand.com), which is:

  ... a hosted CRM offering delivered over the Web and accessible from an Internet browser at a fixed price per user per month. Customers can deploy Siebel CRM OnDemand ... without any upfront IT investments... incorporates a user interface (UI) designed to maximize user success and adoption without extensive training.

• HBO [while a media company, it shares a lot of the characteristics of, say, a software-as-a-service company like Salesforce.com] offers "HBO On Demand" (see their FAQ), which describes itself this way:

  With HBO On Demand you can start watching your favorite HBO shows whenever you want with the ability to pause, fast forward and rewind.

• IBM, of course, has made the on-demand story the centerpiece of a very extensive campaign. Its On Demand Business site contains a link to Sam Palmisano's definition of On Demand from a speech in November 2003:

  Let me ... remind you of the definition of on demand ... It's really about three very simple ideas.

  First, on demand starts with an enterprise's business model and business design. Future innovation in business models will be driven by horizontal integration. For years we've all focused on the vertical process -- CRM, ERP, back office processes and so on. We were digitizing them and making them efficient. Future business models will horizontally connect all the processes that make up an enterprise, and extend out to that enterprise's partnerships.

  Second, in this new world, the technical characteristics necessary to support horizontal integration are changed. The underpinning infrastructure -- the hardware, the software, the storage -- needs to be architected differently to support new business models. The infrastructure needs to be more simple, more automatic, more autonomic and more cost effective.

  Finally, given all these shifts, clients are going to insist on different ways to access, manage and buy technology.

The commonality of those three views could be summarized as "the power in the technology industry is shifting as hapless technology users (who used to just have to use whatever the vendors gave them) are not satisfied with that situation any more and demand that technology be available in the shape and form that they want, when they need it and where they need it." It reaches from the somewhat mundane (e.g. better website functionality such as personalization) to the cutting-edge (e.g. customers asking why they need to interact with a website at all given that they prefer, say, being notified by SMS) and is a substantial shift: it reflects the increased maturity of the technology industry, the increased technical sophistication of individuals and a trend towards treating information and communication technologies just like any other aspect of our lives. Continuing business as usual is not an option given this shift.

As users assert control, and with the intense competition for customers in many industries, having or not having on-demand technology for customers may just be the differentiator that distinguishes the winners and losers in that market. That is probably the underlying reason why the on-demand message has been so well received all across the industry!

Situational Software, is a particularly illuminating example of on-demand technology: software is situational, of course, when it recognizes (within practical limits, but nevertheless) the user's current situation, and proactively provides that user with support for that current situation. So situational software takes into account, for example, that the user has been hurt and thus is not interested in annual report of his health plan's website, but the phone number of the nearest urgent care facility.

While our definition of Situational Software includes the proactive aspect (i.e. user does not need to ask for it, it is provided intelligently and non-intrusively), it speaks to the essence of on-demand technology and on-demand business: get me what I need, when I need it, and don't saddle me with expenses, distractions and complications that I don't need for what I want to accomplish.

One could say that Situational Software is what the user experiences — on their mobile device, their multi-modal interaction etc. — on the receiving end of a proactive on-demand infrastructure.