I work as a copywriter for IT companies, so I like to be sure of the meaning of IT industry terms. Accordingly, when I found EaaS, I looked it up to check the meaning. Unsurprisingly, I found that it has two meanings: Everything-as-a-Service and Enterprise-as-a-Service. This is not all. People might also confuse EaaS with XaaS, which usually means Anything-as-a-Service. Even when you understand the concept, Cloud computing abbreviations can be confusing.
Multiple meanings
What do you understand by these cloud computing abbreviations: SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, BaaS, DPaaS?
I was surprised to discover how many meanings there are for each term. Adrian Bridgewater’s piece in computerweekly.com here discusses three possible meanings for DPaaS.
I think this tends to happen because nothing stands still in the world of IT. Cloud computing terms change as we use them to describe different concepts. We should, therefore, use IT abbreviations with care. This is particularly important if we are writing for a wider business audience.
Create your own XaaS
Most people understand that an aaS product is sold as-a-service. This makes it a neat way to convey an idea. Why not create your own aaS abbreviation? Some companies have done just that. Here is one example: S1aaS. This name belongs to StorONE who offer their storage product as a service. Similarly, Cisco has used CCaaS for contact-centre-as-a-service, and even customer-experience-as-a-service.
IT and cloud concepts in copywriting
SaaS is so common now that we rarely need to write it in full. However, other Cloud computing terms may not be so clear, so it is good to offer an explanation. In fact, the best practice is always to write the term in full, at the first mention.
While I was researching this article, I found some research from the early days of Cloud computing. This research described how 49% of IT managers found it challenging to get approval to buy “SaaS” services. They also found that if they re-named “SaaS” as “on-demand computing”, senior management were more willing to approve their purchases.
Nowadays, most IT providers deliver their solutions through the Cloud. Does this mean that “Software-as-a-service” hardly merits a mention? Earlier this year, the analysts at Forrester wrote that we have gone beyond “aaS” technologies to “a more complex Cloud ecosystem”. They are making the point that we have moved on. Now we talk about “private clouds”, “hybrid clouds” and more.
Cloud Computing terms with multiple meanings
Here are the meanings for the terms above:
SaaS Software-as-a-Service, Storage-as-a-Service, Security-as-a-Service
PaaS Platform-as-a-Service, Payment-as-a-Service
IaaS Infrastructure-as-a-Service, Information-as-a-Service
BaaS Blockchain-as-a-Service, Banking-as-a-Service
DPaaS Development-Platform-as-a-Service, Data-Protection-as-a-Service, Data-Platform-as-a-Service
Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_a_service
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