Clouded thinking

Naming something is critical to establishing its identity. So it interests me that after nearly 10 years in existence, software as a service remains a cloudy concept in many people's minds.
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SaaS often gets confused with cloud computing and vice versa, which frustrates the analysts at Red Monk and writers elsewhere who think the distinctions should be clear by now. But a lack of clarity remains. Perhaps it's the words themselves.

I decided to discuss the matter with John Barry, the author of Technobabble (MIT Press), the definitive work on the language of technology, and a prolific writer of song parodies, about the difference between the two terms.

He said, "Semantically, they're the same." That is, "for all practical purposes" they are synonymous.

Barry went on to describe the Latin and Anglo-Saxon origins of the terms, both borrowing from each language. Cloud and software have Anglo-Saxon roots, it seems, while computing and service stem from the Latin.

It's no wonder, then, that people conflate the two terms as meaning the same thing.

However, what struck me most about my chat with Barry, who does not lay claim to be technical, was his conclusion that the term software as a service was much more meaningful. "It actually tells me something," he said, adding that it is descriptive and helpful to the non-technical person.

On the other hand, cloud computing, he said, somewhat tongue in cheek, "is too nebulous."

Indeed, the terminology remains confusing. Technically, cloud computing is widely considered the system architecture upon which SaaS runs, which means, it has to precede software as a service. After all, how could SaaS exist prior to the systems on which it runs? You need the systems before you can run the software. You may have desired or even designed the software before deploying the systems (aka, cloud), but it would not have become a service until the cloud was in existence.

Well, in this post from last summer the author refers to cloud computing as the next evolutionary step for SaaS, an argument, in effect, where the egg arrives before the chicken. Or, is it the other way around?

So, the semantic confusion persists and will lead to continued technical misunderstandings. After my chat with Barry, I can understand better as to why. If software as a service "actually tells...something" to listeners, they are more likely to use it than a vaguer term, even if technically they are wrong.

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BY Mark Everett Hall
Source：COMPUTERWORLD