- The acronym is pronounced as “sass.” This term is popularized in recent years following the popularization of the cloud, which is a collection of servers that do the increasingly heavy computation so the users don’t have to. The “service” aspect of SaaS partly refers to the “subscription service” that is often the payment model for a software delivered as SaaS. For software delivered traditionally, the licensing is usually done through a one-off purchase for a lifelong access—often without promising any updates. A SaaS would often be a monthly or yearly subscription where a user always gets the latest versions. SaaS also refers to “cloud service,” meaning that the software is delivered often as a “web app” where the heavy computation is done in the “cloud” rather than locally—all one would need is a web browser. Google Docs is a classic SaaS. Few people outside the tech industry would understand it, especially in its acronym form—they are likely using SaaS without realizing it. And SaaS begs to be explained—if the listener doesn’t know, what SaaS is, the speaker can always spell out “software as a service,” and then explain how software can be a service. For those who do understand the term, SaaS can act as a shortcut to conveying this particular type of software provision model. Regardless, it is a jargon and buzzword commonly used by those in the cloud compute industry that hasn’t quite got out into the wild, therefore can often serve as a shibboleth. SaaS inspired a series of other cloud-related jargons including IaaS and PaaS— and by now many people seriously or jokingly filled the alphabet from AaaS to ZaaS.
SaaS
acronym; noun
Acronym for software as a Service, a software provision model where the software is available as a cloud service.
Etymology : Software as a service turned into acronym
Source : “The persuasive wave of cloud computing is affecting every industry and every vertical we can think of. Thanks to all of its fundamental models — IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS plus the latest XaaS, cloud has brought in democratization of infrastructure for businesses.” By Head of Product at Botmetric, a tech startup. Feb 2017. https://www.botmetric.com/blog/xaas-new-hulk-cloud-computing/
Last modified: 26 November 2020