Whatever as a Service – the only ready reckoner you’ll ever need!

lux — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 09:44:13 +0000

I planned to write this post some months back but never got around to it! TheVARGuy’s recent post on Desktops as a Service (DaaS) provided the required impetus!

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re probably aware of the many ‘as a service’ acronyms floating around – from SaaS (Software as a Service) to BaaS (Backup as a Service – you could say, that’s what we enable our channel partners to do) to Desktone’s recently trademarked DaaS.

Want to get on the aaS bandwagon but don’t know where to start? Here’s a handy primer to help you scintillate at your next tech cocktail reception.

Alternatively, look for the gaps (where it says NO in the ‘Taken’ column) in the table below, and stake your claim on what’s available.

Go for it! It’s not all GaaS!

(Scroll to the end of this post for details on the modus operandi – on what qualifies as an ‘as a Service’ acronym and what doesn’t)

?aaS	Taken? (scroll to end for M.O.)	Description / Comments / Trademark-able Ideas
AaaS	NO	We have a winner right off the bat! Maybe it sounds obscene but AaaS is waiting to be taken! Antivirus as a Service, anyone? Symantec – you heard it here first; focus on AaaS and leave the BaaS to us
BaaS	NOT REALLY	Some loose references to Banking as a Service (duh) and Business Intelligence as a Service – which should have been BIAAS. Not a good name for BI, as you can guess. So, BaaS is available. Go ahead, beat us to it! Remember, we facilitate ‘Backup as a Service’
CaaS	NOT REALLY	‘Computing as a Service’ and ‘Communication as a Service’ seem to be going for it but neither has reached mainstream jargonization.
DaaS	YES	Desktone has staked their claim on this one with ‘Desktops as a Service‘. ‘Data as a Service’ and ‘Database as a Service’ could have tried – but they’ve lost their chance!
EaaS	YES	I never expected this to be a Yes, considering that there’s no way you can say EaaS without sounding like you’re part of the supporting cast of Tarzan! But, Ethernet as a service, it is!
FaaS	NO	Again, considering that FaaS sounds like Farce, I expected a total dead end! But there’s some loose mention of ‘Fraud as a Service’. But, FaaS is actually available – for all those ‘Firewall as a Service‘ companies awaiting an upswing in cloud computing adoption! Stake your claim now.
GaaS	NO	Try saying this with a straight face! That’s why it is available. If you missed ‘Computing as a Service’, ‘Grid as a Service’ may be your solution, if you’re that desperate!
HaaS	NOT REALLY	Yes, I’ve heard about ‘Hardware as a Service’ and that’s what HaaS is – to an extent! To see why I’ve categorized this as a ‘Not Really’, you need to read the M.O. at the end of this post.
IaaS	YES	The cloud guys believe this is the closest aaS description of their positioning: Infrastructure as a Service
JaaS	NO	It’s wide open! I couldn’t think up anything interesting! Ideas, anyone?
KaaS	NO	Wow! Two in a row that are available. Komputing as a Service (if you missed CaaS, GaaS, and IaaS and are focused on the German market)
LaaS	NOT REALLY	Some loose mentions of ‘Logistics as a Service’. Your sys admin probably behaves like he’s giving you LAN as a Service?
MaaS	NO	Mail as a Service? Yahoo Mail? Hotmail?Gmail? Anyone? I’m sure this can be used well by some companies. I expect to see something like “Mass market adoption of MaaS is on the rise” in the press!
NaaS	NOT REALLY	‘Network as a Service‘ seems to be a term than never hit big time – yet!
OaaS	NO	Like EaaS, this falls under the Tarzan category! Can’t be said with a straight face unless you are suitably inebriated!
PaaS	YES	After a series of available aaS acronyms, we’re now entering hotly contested territory. Platform as a Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platform and solution stack – as a service. It facilitates deployment of applications without the cost and complexity of buying and managing the underlying hardware and software layers.
QaaS	YES	Nowhere near mainstream adoption – but there’s talk of Quality as a Service (probably some of those 6 sigma guys with a lot of time on their hands) and Query as a Service
RaaS	NOT REALLY	Loose talk of Reporting as a Service & Research as a Service. Some of our service provider partners offer their SMB customers their restored data on USB drives that they ship to customer sites (imagine trying to restore 100GB over a slow connection). Is this “Restore as a Service“? Perhaps it is, but mercifully, they don’t call it that! So, RaaS is available, folks!
SaaS	YES YES YES	This is where it all began. This is what started the aaS movement! The oldest profession in the world was always offered ‘as a Service‘. Luckily for Salesforce, they never trademarked it.
TaaS	NOT REALLY – YET	I see a battle brewing here! In an effort to go one up on Software as a Service, there’s an even more generic ‘Technology as a Service’ doing the rounds. Apparently, that’s what MSPs offer their customers! There’s also ‘Trust as a Service‘ – with a Wikipedia page on it too. It’s basically Security as a Service – where security is spelt with a T! IBM also seems to have touted a ‘Tools as a Service’ offering earlier this year!
UaaS	NO	The Tarzan vowel problem strikes again. See AaaS, EaaS & OaaS. Ideas, anyone? Utilities as a Service? Is that something your electricity company already does?
VaaS	NOT REALLY	I predict future battles between ‘Virtualization as a Service‘ and ‘Video as a Service’. After their recent cloud announcements, expect to see ‘VMWare as a Service’ too.
WaaS	NO	It’s available. But beware, it doesn’t sound good at cocktail receptions. “We’re in the Waas space!” doesn’t work. It simply won’t elicit the “that sounds impressive though I have no clue what you’re talking about” look from listeners!
XaaS	YES	Yes, its true! It’s taken! In fact, XaaS could have been the title of this post. Apparently x (remember your algebra) is a variable used to represent all the other aaS discussed here. XaaS is just an umbrella term. Rumor has it that the porn industry tried trademarking XXXaaS – but then realised that they’re better off with a shorter word – porn!
YaaS	NO	Wide open. Go for it. Incidentally, many Asians pronounce ‘Yes’ this way!
ZaaS	NOT REALLY	But there was a mention of ‘Zimbra as a Service’

MO (Modus Operandi):

1. First, we simply googled up XaaS (substitute X with appropriate letter).

2. If there was a reasonable mention of XYZ as a Service, then, XYZ as a Service it was, and a ‘YES’ in the taken column

3. If no XYZ as a Service came up, we simply assume that the XaaS term was not mainstream enough and give it a fighting chance by googling up ‘XaaS as a Service’ (without the quotes). If there is any XYZ as a Service, however remote, it should come up in this search. If it did, it was assumed that while it existed as jargon, it hadn’t yet ‘made it’ like SaaS or PaaS. Hence the ‘NOT REALLY’ tag.

4. And if neither search threw up XYZ as a Service offerings, it was a ‘NO’.

5. We restricted our checking to page one of Google’s results!

The above post was written by Lakshmanan (Lux) Narayan of Vembu Technologies. Vembu Technologies is a backup software vendor whose product, StoreGrid, powers the online backup services of a large number of service providers across the globe. Besides remote backup, StoreGrid is also used for on premise backups of workstations and servers at various companies & universities.

Tennis Image:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/75449583@N00/ / CC BY 2.0

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Whatever as a Service – the only ready reckoner you’ll ever need!