Survey Software in the Cloud

Over at Power Windows, I was reading The Crowd is Getting Into the Cloud, which talks about the continuing migration of IT services from within the walls of organizations out to the Internet "cloud" and references a survey which shows that some organizations are dragging their feet. From my vantage point on survey software, it has been fascinating to watch such systems slowly "evaporate" into the cloud.  It was a gradual shift, rather than a sudden change.

Back in 1997, Perseus SurveySolutions and Raosoft EZSurvey were the first two applications built ground up specifically for web surveys; earlier applications had been for paper or CATI surveys that later added web support. Both SurveySolutions and EZSurvey required users to install forms-processing scripts on their own web servers.
By early 1998, at Perseus Development Corp., we were offering people a complimentary forwarding service in the cloud, which would email survey results to their email inbox. Our desktop software would then download these results into our desktop-side database. Later in the year, WebSurveyor took this a step further, allowing users to download the results from the cloud, eliminating any need for email integration. 
And in September 1999, MarketTools released Zoomerang, putting an entire Do-It-Yourself survey application within the cloud.
By 2004, you could use web services with survey software applications in the cloud, such as SurveySolutions/EFM, removing one of the last functional limitations of Software-as-a-Service, enabling your applications in the cloud to be integrated to one another and to the applications on your own servers.

In 2009, most survey software is really "survey software-as-a-service" and, because their feet were on the ground the whole time, users are now comfortable having their head in the clouds.