Software as a Service as a path to software sustainability

This is a position paper for the 2013 Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences. The following is its abstract:

We argue that the software-as-a-service (SaaS) paradigm has advantages as a sustainable delivery method for scientific software. We report on our experience developing and delivering the Globus Online research data management system using SaaS approaches. We note problems encountered and, for some problems, solutions that appear effective. We also identify conditions that we consider necessary for attaining sustainability and anticipated challenges in meeting these conditions.