It has been said before. But Internet-based applications have moved into the mainstream this year. That does not mean that everyone is using them, especially in the world of professional tax preparation. However, the signs are there that cloud computing has come of age.Another marker is the trend for resellers of accounting software to exit the business of selling desktop financial applications in favor of concentrating on the Internet versions. That trend seems likely only to accelerate through the rest of this year.
And even though most practitioners still do not use SaaS versions of tax preparation software, the signs are there also. Mike Sabbatis, president of CCH, says his company plans no major changes to the desktop version of ProSystem fx Tax for the 2012 tax year. Other major players, Intuit and Thomson Reuters, seem to be marking time on the desktop as they wait for the web versions to become adopted en masse.
We have seen how change proceeds before. Once, floppy disks were the way software was distributed. As the switch to CD distribution hit full stride, it was still possible to get floppies, but at a price and then they disappeared. The same thing has happened as vendors moved towards making software available by download. It became virtually impossible to get most tax software without an Internet connection.
With the next year, we are likely to see the same progression. It will become harder to get desktop software and then almost impossible to get anything but web-based applications. It will take a few years. But we have been along this road before.
