TP-as-a-service. Are the Cloud as-a-service labels out of control?

It’s easy to see when the next new wave of technology hits because the marketing sharks come out doing their best to chum for new market share. Software as a Service aka SaaS used to be the only as a service buzzword in the Cloud services buzzword bingo. As time went on, we started to see hardware as a service (HaaS), Platform as a service, PaaS), IaaS, Infrastructure as as service.

Then someone who spends allot of time making slides noticed the little cloud puff in the MS Visio that represents the internet and blamo… “Cloud Computing”!

The whole idea of as a service is really nothing new. The idea of outsourcing any given business process to another company (as a service) has been around since business exists. Can you imagine if someone started using the as-a-service tag in the 60′s? SaaS would have a whole new meaning (Secretary as a Service)!

In the end, all we are really offering is services bundled in different ways. In a time when the word “Outsourcing” began to take on a negative connotation, the need to reinvent prevailed, and the –as-a-service tag it seems is here to stay. Don’t get me wrong, I’m perfectly ok with it, but let us as technology solution providers not get so cute with new buzzwords that we start to confuse our end clients.

Thanks for our Microsoft marketing friends and the “to the cloud” campaign; we are already having conversations to explain why “Cloud Computing” does not directly equal “Internet Computing”, but it is an important part of adding the flexibility and scalability to the value proposition. Yes you can have “Cloud Computing” based solutions without having to use the public internet. Yes you can have cloud computing called a “private cloud” where you are not in a multi-tenant environment. All these strategies may use different parts of the “as a service” model, so why get caught up with trying to coin new as a service terms.

At the rate we’re going in the race to coin new a-a-s tags, I’m wondering how long it will take for the TP-a-a-service to be sold in all corporate bathrooms to cut down on bathroom costs? Are we far off!

How about we just stick to the ones we have…

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