Service as a Service – My new SaaS play….

Why not? We have Software as a Service, Platforms as a Service, and a host of others. How about Service as a Software? That's what all the backup guys are really offering – not Software as a Service.

This "asS" acronym might be my final undoing. Lemmings, you all are. Why can't we simply say what we do? Why do we feel compelled to jump on any passing bandwagon in some pathetic attempt to reap rewards that invariably end up causing customers confusion to the point of giving up and taking a job mowing lawns?

Mozy is a backup service. No one in their right mind considers it "Software" – it's backup. Connected (Iron Mountain) sells me services – they back my stuff up, and give it back when I need it. It ain't software. If I wanted software, I'd buy it. The whole point is I don't want software - I don't even necessarily want a service – I want backup.

Do we call online banking BaaS? Retail shopping online RaaS? Is a train really Transportation as a Service?

5 years ago if you used the word service you were ridiculed. You couldn't fund a service company to save your life. GlassHouse might be the biggest "in your face" to the establishment in twenty years. They were told they were nuts to even think about a service play, that they could never raise a dime, and they could never have a legitimate company. The establishment was full of crap (as a service, which would be CaaS).

Now services are way back in vogue. So what do we do, we ruin them by grabbing the latest moniker du jour and shoving it on top of our ill advised product. Can a tow truck company use Jack as a Service – or Jack aaS?

I am totally fine with the "aaS" descriptor and even the concept used properly. "aaS" is a way to enable different consumption models for technology and products for customers, and therefore expand the reachable markets for these technologies and products. I think that's great.

Coming up with new out of the box thinking around go to market models that enable us to put our value into more markets is great. Creating new unique ways for customers to do business with us is fantastic. "aaS" in the pure sense – the Salesforce.com model – is exactly the right play. They knew people failed in their CRM endeavors most of the time. They knew it failed because the promise of CRM was littered with a minefield of noisy, competitive offerings that ended up requiring a huge time and expertise investment on the part of the customer – who had better things to do. Salesforce took away the biggest obstacles to consumer consumption – they offered the stuff as a service. By doing so they took away that whole "IT problem", took away the capital cost/budget problem, and also took away the complexity by only giving people what they actually needed versus all the marvelous bells and whistles they might have normally jammed into their product in order to differentiate it.

It ain't about the moniker people; it's about the business model. Do business the way your customer wants to and good things happen. That's $aa$.

Comments

[Scott Bush - AmeriVault Marketing]

Thank you Steve!!! At least ASP had service provider in it. SaaS needs to die. If you had to recover a 20 GB Exchange server, do you want to rely on some remote software app or do you want a seasoned team of experts walking you through every step?

Still lol re Jack aaS.
Maybe Harvard could come out with online education service and call it Smart aaS.