April 25, 2006
How about xAAS? (x as a service)
ASP, ISP, MSP, xSP, SAAS, Web 2.0, On-Demand, service bureau, business service, Internet service, service utility, data service, web service, service oriented, video on-demand, "salesforce.com for (fill in the blank)", mash-ups, composite applications, technology-enabled outsources service, blah blah blah…
We recently had to sort through all of these terms to try and decide how to title a forum. Since we settled on a B2B focus, we decided to call it a On-Demand/SAAS Forum, which seem to be the most appropriate "tags" in use today.
The process pointed out a real flaw in the current vocabulary for describing newer approaches for offering valuable products to consumers and businesses with as little installation/configuration/integration/maintenance/use headaches as possible (that's what it is all about, isn't it?).
The forum led to my rethinking the tag for the introductory presentation at the forum. Perhaps a better tag for the service is xAAS (pronounced zass).
Here is the 2 minute presentation posted as a YouTube Video…let me know your thoughts…
Update: Tien Tzuo, SVP of Strategy at Salesforce.com, pointed out that the presentation style I used was of the Lawrence Lessig style. I didn't realize it had a name, but I had seen and loved Dick Hardt's Identity 2.0 presentation using the style. I have also met Dick a couple of times and have a lot of time for both him and his ideas…
Now What? 
Charles Jolley said,
April 25, 2006 at 8:59 am
I think naming confusion as great way to gauge for how far along the adoption curve a technology has progressed. The more uniformly people name things, the more mature the adoption.
Clearly SaaS is taking root in the enterprise community, which tells me that its use is also becoming far more common.
There is still a lot of confusion in the consumer and small business space, though. Whatever the final name is, I don’t think any acronym like SaaS or xAAS is going to cut it outside of big IT departments. It’s just not friendly enough.
At Sproutit, we create hosted business software for small businesses and small teams. This group did not respond well to acronyms like SaaS, so we use the term ‘web application.’ Even that is a little geeky, but it gets the point across in a friendly way.
Charles Jolley said,
April 25, 2006 at 9:00 am
PS. Glad to see you posting again. I was just thinking today its been awhile since I’ve seen anything on this blog. Your posts are always very thought provoking.
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