Just about everything seems to be available in version 2.0 these days. I think the first was Web 2.0, which as you probably know indicates the development of the Internet into an interactive, collaborative, social network.

And then came Business 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Office 2.0, Sales 2.0, and all the other 2.0s, all indicating
use of the same type of technology.

The same thing seems to be happening to the -aaS acronym.

Today I saw a news story about companies, such as Cool Blue Interactive and Cbeyond, that are delivering communications and telecom services on demand. CIO Insight called this CaaS, or Communication as a Service.

Having seen several similar acronym usages, I did some Googling and was surprised to discover that an entire alphabet soup of acronyms were floating around out there for on-demand technologies. Here's a quick rundown of the other -aaS acronyms floating around out there.

AaaS - Architecture as a Service

Not in wide use, this acronym was used by blogger Steve Richards to refer to architecture services such as virtualization technology.

BaaS - Business as a Service

Rather than an offering, this appears to be more of an idea that all businesses ought to make their offerings available as a service rather than a mere purchase.

DaaS - Data as a Service

This appears to have originated from StrikeIron, a company that aims to distribute live data across the Internet in a centralized location.

EaaS - Ethernet as a Service

WhatIs.com calls this the use of high bandwidth, fiber optic media to deliver Ethernet services to customers across a common broadband infrastructure.

FaaS - Frameworks as a Service

It's difficult to tell whether or not this is in wide usage, but a number of blogs describe it as an application development environment that is provided as a service.

GaaS - Globalization as a Service (also used for Governance as a Service

A Google search reveals that this acronym is starting to be used by those who would offer globalization services, as well as those who would use SaaS for data governance.

HaaS - Hardware as a Service

This is another uncommon one that is being used to refer to provision of virtual machines

IaaS - Infrastructure as a Service (also Integration as a Service)

MuleSource seems to be a primary user of the Integration as a Service definition, wherein system integration functionality is offered in the clouds (Rosenberg discusses this here). Infrastructure as a Service is the idea that customers would no longer purchase servers, software, data center space, etc. but would rather use those as an outsourced service, according to Wikipedia.

IDaaS - Identity as a Service

IDaaS is the idea that identity services can be purchased on an on-demand basis, and the acronym appears to be widely used even among Forrester analysts.

LaaS - Lending as a Service

Okay, so LaaS isn't really in wide usage, but blogger Akash Bhatia used the term in commenting on IBM's Lender Business Process Services and likening it to an on-demand lending service.

MaaS - Mashups as a Service

Bloggers around the Web use this acronym to refer to the "convergence of SOA with Web 2.0," as Chuck Allen of HR XML puts it.

OaaS (multiple meanings)

Around the Web, this seems to be used for everything from "Organization as a Service" to "Optimization as a Service" to "Operations as a Service."

PaaS - Platform as a Service

Salesforce.com is pushing this one in a major way to describe its new Force.com offering that enables businesses to create and run applications on-demand.

TaaS - Technology as a Service (also Testing as a Service)

The latter seems to be used by Blue Star Infotech to describe an independent testing service it offers to ISVs. Technology as a Service seems to have a very similar definition to Business as a Service and Organization as a Service.

VaaS - Voice as a Service

A company called M5 Networks uses this as a means of offering call center services through an on-demand model.

WaaS - Whatever as a Service

Blogger Darren Wesemann has a good point in using this acronym to describe the multitude of "as a Service" acronyms.

XaaS - X as a Service

This term is a synonym to WaaS. Blogger Lincoln Murphy attempted to coin the term but then discovered it already existed. His post links a YouTube video someone made about the term.

ZaaS - Zero as a Service

The sole use of this term seems to be by the Project Zero development team in discussing the attempt to expose samples as a service.

Is overuse of the acronym destined to give everyone a headache trying to figure it all out?

If you know of -aaS acronyms not listed here, please post them in the comments below!

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After acquiring successful on-demand security provider Postini, everyone’s favorite search engine turned SaaS leader, a.k.a. Google, quickly integrated Postini functionality into its Google Apps Premier Edition offering (read the press release here), which is quickly shaping up to be a major force in the on-demand office suite space. I thought it would be interesting to have a chat with Google about the integration and the future of Google Apps, and I was joined by Google’s Rajen Sheth, one of the product managers who work on Google Apps Premier Edition.

Can you talk a little about the rationale behind the integration of Postini functionality into Google Apps and what benefits customers will see as a result?

Sheth: The rationale behind the integration and the acquisition of Postini is twofold. One is that as we have been selling to businesses, we were realizing that compliance and email security are very, very important components to the story of providing a complete messaging solution to businesses -- a clear component we needed to have within our offering to offer to medium-sized businesses or larger.

The other thing about Postini is that they're one of the most successful SaaS vendors for messaging. So we thought that this would be a really great fit; what we did was basically within three weeks after announcing the acquisition, we integrated those technologies together. The core Postini functions were a specific policy-based virus filtering, content policy management product which basically allows the organization to choose what info they want to let through by email and control of outbound email based on keywords, and finally a 90-day message recovery package. That’s a 90-day rolling window of email for an organization, effectively a backup that they can recover from, which can be turned on as a service.

A part of the integration is also a promotional offer for Postini customers where we’re offering Google Apps Premier Edition to existing Postini customers for free until June of next year.

So what kinds of companies are typically using Google Apps Premier Edition and Postini right now?

Sheth: It varies across the board for both of those products, for Postini and Google Apps. We see customers of a variety of sizes from very small businesses to the largest of the large. We’re seeing interest in integration of these two specific functionalities across the board; many small customers activate and start using Postini functionality immediately after the integration. We’re also seeing a lot of interest from larger companies, so definitely an interest for our applications as a service.

Do you have any response to the market criticism from other office application suite leaders who claim that SaaS offerings aren’t ready for prime time?

Sheth: It goes down to the customers and we have over a half a million organizations that are using this, and most are businesses of a variety of sizes. We have educational institutions that are 10000 users apiece that are using this, and a few dozen enterprise pilots going on as well. We see a variety of feedback from the market that this is definitely a viable solution. The way that we do things is we really respond to user interest and to user needs, and our philosophy is to release something and continue to iterate, iterate, iterate. We've seen with Apps gaining more and more in the market at a high level.

What are the primary benefits companies are looking for with Google Apps?

Sheth: The main benefits that people are seeing the clear bens of SaaS in general. SaaS scales more effectively and us more cost effective as it scales, compared with the cost to deploy a solution in house SaaS is dramatically lower. As a service we can innovate very quickly and iterate as a service; one example is Prudential Realty in Chicago, which has several hundred real estate agents that they previously were not providing services too because agents were remote and not in one office.

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ComputerWorld has reported on a speech by Bob Moul, CEO of Boomi Inc, in which Moul says that most IT executives' objections to SaaS are becoming non-issues. SaaS vendors can seek out SAS 70 certification in order to assure data protection. Vendors are also coming up with ways to offer customization to individual customers and integration is becoming much smoother.

On the issue of security, an interesting release was reported by TMCnet. Anakam.TFA has introduced a two-factor authentication suite specifically designed for SaaS providers.The company pointed out that cost-effective two-factor authentication was critical to protecting revenue streams and would stop unauthorized access or password sharing.

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In an article recently posted on ebizQ, Xactly Corporation founder Christopher Cabrera writes on how SaaS could herald a new era of a more customer-centric software industry. Customers who have purchased on-premise software have made a much greater commitment to a specific vendor and can be left at the mercy of that vendor's customer service support lines when problems arise.

But with on-demand software, the customers have much more ability to make changes if the vendor is less than responsive -- meaning that vendors who don't treat their customers right risk losing a lot of business. Cabrera's article details how SaaS moves the customer higher in the pecking order.

He also raises an interesting point about "hosted on-demand" software that is merely the on-premise software in a hosted environment with large upfront implementation costs, calling the tactic a wolf in sheep's clothing, and he suggests a checklist for how to evaluate potential SaaS solutions.

Read more here.

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Adobe has been in a number of SaaS headlines over the past few months as the company boosts its on-demand software efforts. In an interview with IDG News Service, posted on InfoWorld Netherlands, Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen commented on Adobe's Web 2.0 intentions.

Chizen pointed out in the interview that Adobe plans to create hybrid applications that offer hosted functionality for things like sharing but also take advantage of the desktop, but he predicted a minimum of five years before a full-featured application such as Photoshop could be delivered online because of the limitations of broadband. But Adobe's plans sound similar to Microsoft's in that the immediate future sounds a lot like "Software plus Services" by having built-in services available from a desktop-installed application.

Chizen also commented on Microsoft's plan to deliver video and graphics on the Web similarly to Flash, and predicted that Microsoft would take a long time to catch up to Flash. Read more of the interview here.

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The concept of Platforms at a Service (PaaS) has that distinct smell of overambition that waft through the IT sector with more regularity than most of us would probably like.

To recap, PaaS is about offering an online platform complete with the application development, data storage and other tools required to run multi-tenanted, massively scalable applications, explains Ovum analyst David Bradshaw. That falls in line with the previously announced Salesforce.com SOA that marries ERP functionalities with on-demand services. You know, kind of like the stuff SAP has been trumpeting in its new Business ByDesign product for a while now.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves; Salesforce.com, a Force (ha ha) to be reckoned with in the SaaS space considers PaaS the next evolutionary step in its business model.

Indeed, as CEO Benioff made clear in his Dreamforce 2007 developer conference speech last month, he views as the new model that will help his company keep up as Microsoft, SAP and other heavyweights charge full speed ahead into the SaaS space in the next few years.

Judging by the blogosphere, however, far from everyone shares Benioff's grand PaaS vision. Dharmesh Shah at OnStartups.com questioned the wisdom of putting all eggs in one basket. The question, as it stands, is less about technology and more about strategic vision. Or to put it more pointedly:

"Is your PaaS vendor going to be tempted to enter your SaaS market?" Smoothspan asked. "If they’re already an application vendor, it’s scary. What are the chances Marc Benioff will let a breakthrough CRM component thrive on his platform versus taking steps to force them to sell to him or worse, building a competitor?"

That, in addition to the inevitable wobbliness that comes with new models, is a strong argument against PaaS' future. Miracles can happen, but we're not holding our breath.

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IT Week has an interesting commentary by Rod Newing on how SaaS may impact the mission critical accounting systems market. Like many other fields, SaaS is a common topic in accounting circles, but analysts quoted in the article predict that SaaS will not affect this particular market for a few years given that companies aren't typically inclined to seek migration of mission critical accounting software.

The article had some interesting statements about the barriers to SaaS migration, particularly that of the emotional barriers. Companies commonly fear having data hosted elsewhere and fear what could happen if the SaaS provider had a network outage and an application became unavailable. IT Week calls these fears irrational, remembering that that most reputable SaaS providers will have a team of in-house specialists focused on problems of data security and meeting of service level agreements guaranteeing specific amounts of uptime, so in many cases, SaaS could be even more reliable than in-house options.

ComputerWorld addressed some of the same points in a piece listing nine things you "need to know" about SaaS. Nearly all vendors guarantee 99.5% uptime or greater for applications and have methods in place to address specific customers' security concerns, such as keeping data inside a firewall for customers that require in.

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All the big vendors are doing it, and now HP is showing even more interest in joining the party. Late last week, HP unveiled its SaaS strategy, as Application Development Trends reported. The company will now offer its Business Technology Optimization solutions as a hosted solution via SaaS as well as in an on-premise format.

HP entered the SaaS field in November 2006 when it purchased Mercury Interactive. CBR also reported in early October that HP's SaaS business unit head Mark Olesen describes the company's additional SaaS plans. HP is offering a service desk and SOA governance tool via SaaS and is considering offering its newly acquired SPI Dynamics and Opsware in SaaS format.

ebizQ has posted HP's full announcement about its new SaaS offerings.

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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer spoke recently at the Gartner Symposium in Orlando. Among other things, he commented on the trend toward SaaS, stating that the world is definitely moving in that direction but also that "you will never be able to do as good a job on Microsoft Office if it's just browser-based," according to a
PC World report.

It is true that offices that regularly use office applications and rely a lot on features will probably
not begin migrating en-masse to SaaS-based word processors or spreadsheets anytime soon, given that SaaS word processors generally don't hold a candle to MS Office in terms of features, but I wonder about offices that might use office applications only casually, such as to draft correspondence or office
memos. Small and medium businesses might theoretically benefit from moving at least some employees onto more scaled down office suites that run from a browser.

In other Microsoft news,
Mary Hayes Weier of InformationWeek commented recently that, although Microsoft is talking up its Online Services for Business, Microsoft's true SaaS play is really Titan, the code name for its Dynamics Live CRM. Weier stated that Microsoft probably envisions Titan becoming a serious competitor for Salesforce.com and possibly becoming the market leader. Of course, the truth of that effort will become apparent over time and Titan may indeed fizzle when it hits the market. But, as one commenter posted, Salesforce.com customers tend to be nearly as devoted to that company as open
source users are to Linux, so the idea of customers migrating en masse to Microsoft may be unlikely.

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After weeks of speculation, SAP has confirmed that it plans to take over competitor Business Objects for $6.78 billion. SAP's shares dropped on the news.

Ken Rudin, CEO of LucidEra (a provider of SaaS-based BI) mused on what the announcement would mean for Business Objects' fledgling SaaS offerings.

"Given all the overlapping BI functionality within SAP, it's unclear what direction Business Objects' SaaS offerings will now take, or how much support they'll get. This will create a lot of doubt and a strong sense of instability in the minds of prospects considering Business Objects' SaaS offerings," Rudin said.

Business Objects announced its offering Business Intelligence OnDemand last month. SAP also unveiled its Business ByDesign product, formerly codenamed A1S. eWeek reporter Clint Boulton wondered about the future of business intelligence collaboration as it relates to the news, pointing out that collaboration tools could unlock the true value of business intelligence. Analysts quoted in the eWeek article noted that Business Objects' SaaS offering allowed users to share BI reports, and Gilbane Group analyst Geoff Bock believed that the acquisition could create "a new kind of platform for collaborative information delivery."

ebizQ.net's editor-in-chief Liz Book also commented on the acquisition here.

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I've heard a lot of talk about a big downside of SaaS, from the vendor's perspective at least, being that it means a lot less immediate money from each new sale, meaning that a business's revenue would be spread out over a much lengthier amount of time and less accessible for business growth.

So I was interested to find a press release by Five9 in which it decided to offer permanent access to its SaaS-based predictive dialer for a one-time initial purchase followed up by a yearly maintenance fee. In other words, the deal means customers can use the same pricing model for SaaS as if they were buying on-premise hardware.

The model certainly solves the initial problem for the vendor, but will the model be popular among customers? It is hard to imagine companies being willing to pay similar rates for permanent access to a service as they would for physical, on-premise products. But then again, the idea of paying upfront for future services is hardly new -- Web hosting companies have offered annual rates for Web server space for years, with a discount for customers who pay by the year rather than by the month. It will be interesting to see whether or not Five9 is onto something.

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If you've visited SaaS Week before, you have probably noticed that the interface has changed. I'm happy to announce that we have just finished migrating SaaSWeek.com onto its new home in the ebizQ network.

Now that SaaS Week has officially joined ebizQ, vendors discussed on SaaS Week will get more exposure and coverage. On ebizQ, SaaS Week readers will be able to more easily access a network of SaaS-related webinars, white papers and reports, and podcasts.

If you subscribe to this blog's RSS feed, you will not need to change any of your settings.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy SaaS Week's new look!

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With the exception of Oracle, and perhaps Microsoft, it seems the large software companies out there are buying into SaaS -- literally. This week, EMC confirmed rumors that it would buy Berkeley Data Systems -- maker of Mozy, an online backup service. With recent SaaS acquisition announcements by companies like Adobe, Yahoo!, Cisco, and others, the trend definitely seems to be for vendors to enter the SaaS market through buying existing services.

Liam Lahey of eChannelLine reported on EMC's announcement and interviewed analysts who said the move is further evidence of the changing landscape for the SaaS field, and that the online backup field is increasingly "ripe for prime time." Lahey quotes IT analyst Michelle Warren of Info-Tech Research Group as saying, 'When major, tier one vendors move into a market especially through acquisition it is an indication that a market is maturing . . . EMC and Seagate entering it is a huge indication that this market is maturing."

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I read an interesting blog post today by Dana Blankenhorn of ZDNet, in which Blankenhorn mused on whether primitive Internet connection speeds would drag down growth in niches like Software-as-a-Service. Blankenhorn asked his wife to try an online spreadsheet application and then found that, after filling a few dozen cells, the application started taking minutes to load each new entry, despite having a cable Internet connection. (More on Blankenhorn's experience here.)

Blankenhorn then brought up the idea that primitive Internet service could be a major sticking point to growth of on-demand applications.

The idea definitely has some merit. Even though most metropolitan areas in the US have a choice of broadband connection methods, many areas still do not. And although most enterprises count on having a steady, fast Internet connection and have large IT departments to keep things running, many SMBs or remote offices to larger enterprises might not have an always on, always fast Internet connection. And even though most vendors of Web-based applications would have near-constant availability as a matter of critical importance, the customer's end would also need to have a steady, fast Internet connection to make sure that the employees could efficiently access the application.

Again, probably not a matter of critical importance in a large company located in a metro like Silicon Valley or NYC, but it could certainly be an issue for, say, the IT department of a department store in the middle of the Great Plains that's still working off dial-up or a slower cable Internet connection.

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In responding to Microsoft's announcements earlier this week, numerous sources around the Web have some things to say. Sean Gallagher of InfoWorld wondered whether Microsoft could manage IT online. He pointed out that SaaS is well proven by Salesforce.com and similar companies but that Microsoft's efforts so far in the Live space just aren't really cutting the mustard.

Despite having an advantage by a wide base of existing customers that could theoretically migrate to on-demand applications, Microsoft's Live services "have been a bomb in the consumer and small business sector," Gallagher says, and the company could stand to work on its Internet services strategy.

Phil Wainewright at ZDNet called Microsoft's approach equal to one of the three monkeys (along with SAP and Adobe): Speak no SaaS, and said that Microsoft's strategy appears to be launching of services complementary to its products but not offering anything that might compete against its on-premise software, but wondered if Redmond might merely be trying to buy time to develop a better online strategy at the risk of sending customers elsewhere.

Meanwhile, Computerworld points out that Adobe seems to be taking a page from Microsoft's book and copying its "Software + Services" strategy and creating Web-based complements to its software in order to avoid risking cannibalization. Vendors definitely do seem to walk a fine line in their efforts to remain competitive while not teeing off their partners.

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In a not terribly unexpected move, Microsoft has announced plans to offer hosted versions of its Exchange server and SharePoint software, as well as a product called Office Communications Server and a SaaS version of security tool Forefront. The move is a response to increasing competitions from on-demand rivals, such as Google Apps, and is sure to be an interesting addition to the array of SaaS offerings on the marketplace.

The SaaS offerings will be available only to customers buying 5000 or more seats, said Microsoft product management director Eron Kelly in a PC World article. The same article pointed out the interesting challenges Microsoft faces in making these sorts of SaaS forays, given that Microsoft wants to avoid competing with its partners, which primarily target smaller companies, but by targeting larger organizations may antagonize resellers and systems integrators that prefer on-premise software due to greater upfront revenue and upsell opportunities.

Mary Jo Foley of ZDNet reported on an additional announcement by Microsoft that particularly targeted competition by Google Docs, which is Office Live Workspace -- a new online feature of MS Office that allows for document collaboration and online storage by consumers and small-business users. Office Live Workspace is not truly a SaaS offering, given that anyone using it must install Microsoft Office rather than access it through a Web browser, but it will reportedly allow for online collaboration -- one of the benefits played up by Google for its Google Apps. Foley reported that Microsoft is taking sign-ups from prospective beta testers starting today, with the beta scheduled to launch in about a month. The service will be free.

CRN's Steven Burke wasn't buying the hype at all and today posted an article on five reasons Google Docs beats Office Live Workspace, lambasting the Microsoft option for not allowing document creation and editing within a Web page, among other reasons.

To add another twist to the growing SaaS competition in the word processing and office document space, Adobe Systems announced that it would buy a company called Virtual Ubiquity, which developed the Buzzword word processor. The tool works online or off, in a browser or on a desktop, as Andy Patrizio of InternetNews.com reports.

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