Last week we had a question regarding the use of terms for Cloud Technology. I wanted to throw in my two cents on Cloud terminology and it’s ever evolving nature. Living in a world of IT sometimes I think I sometimes lose touch with what end consumers are calling their products vs. what industry speak calls products. When someone in the IT industry uses the phrase Cloud it can mean a number of things, IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, hybrid, private, public and so on. The Cloud serves as a blanket term.
So I have been very open about my opinions on acronyms and terminology in the MSP profession and SaaS is no different. I’ll begin with a question: please identify another profession that changes its name and terminology as frequently as the high tech/MSP sector? Answer: they don’t.
SaaS used to be ASP. Why did they change it from ASP? Probably because of a consultant/analyst that suggested it be named something new and now it will run its course until someone comes up with a different naming convention.
For industry professionals, especially those focused on the internet, there is awareness, and understanding of terms like Cloud, SaaS, IaaS, PaaS. Analysts will also easily define and understand the terms and people in the industry do listen to them.
On the other hand, if you asked a typical consumer, I think you’d find awareness of these terms is low to non-existent. Some examples:
– An iTunes user doesn’t think about iTunes as a SaaS
or cloud application, but as internet music service
or site.
– A CEO whose sales force use SalesForce.com for Sales
automation and CRM won’t think of SalesForce as a SaaS,
cloud based application but as a critical on-line tool
– A Flickr user doesn’t think of Flickr as an SaaS application
but as on-line photo management and sharing
So … No, I don’t think the term SaaS is going away as an industry term, and those building the services and providing tools and add-ons will be aware of what they are working on – but as you noted I don’t think the term will have high popular awareness. We won’t be advertising to non-technical end users that we have a new SaaS offering – but that we have a new applications available on the web.
Andy Kicklighter – Technical Marketing Manager, Cloud – Nimsoft