Many companies have been making attempts to redefine the
terminology of Internet since the inception of the World Wide Web. These often
include new explanations, structuring, or methods of services. Here are some
examples: The ISP (Internet Service Provider) is very old. The SOA (Service
Oriented Architecture) is old. The AWS (Amazon Web Service) is old. The AC2
(Elastic Cloud Computing) is not so old.
We now make references to
"Everything as a Service", such as SaaS (Software as a Service), HaaS
(Hardware), CaaS (Communication), IaaS (Infrastructure). This has brought to our
attention that Everything as a Service will be the new buzz word for the
Internet in the upcoming year.
Not everything can be serviced on
Internet, but many things are moving in that direction. For the purpose of the
following example, we will define that "Anything" is substitute by "X", and that
XaaS hereinafter is any word that can be use to as-a-Service. The philosophy
of XaaS is to enable ways of living into services.
In everyday life, one
can buy a car, or "rent a car" (as-a-Service), buy a condo or "rent an
apartment" (as-a-Service). Essentially, any way of living can be seen as
properties or services, except for consumable products (food, printer ink, gas,
etc.). However, in the digital world, anything can be viewed as a property or
service. For example:
- Application Software (aaS): This is what most
people classify as a SaaS. Standalone applications (Windows, Office Suite, Virus
protection, Graphic Editor, etc.) have flourished incredibly with the support of
major forces, such as Microsoft and all other venders buying into their
philosophies. The new trend has been led by Salesforce.com, Zoho.com and
GoogleApps. The use and need of applications are now offered as a service and
ultimately most business applications will be available in this fashion.
- Hardware (aaS): Most companies run their websites from their own servers,
although there are many websites, which uses hosting companies (Godaddy,
Interland, etc),
which offers hardware resources as a service. We are able to upload our website,
and pay for computer usage.
- Search/Directories (aaS): We utilize large
directories (YellowPages, CityGuide, BusinessGuide, etc). The search
capabilities provide an index of the Internet as a service. We are offer search
engines (Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, etc.), structured categories (Netvibes,
myYahoo, etc.), and socially-networked links (Delicious, Digg, Reddit, etc.).
- Information (aaS): The use of newspapers is one way to broadcast events.
The web embodies vast information sites (Nytimes, BoingBoing, CNet, MSN, etc.).
There are also sites that specialize in providing organized information
(Wikipedia, Wikileaks, etc.).
- Market (aaS): These are sites that enable
the sale of goods by the owner of the goods. These sites are what truly make the
market. This group includes auction sites (eBay and Taobao) which take a
percentage of every sale.
- Payment (aaS): Paypal dominates this market
with its brilliant viral service although Google is rumored to have
competitive capabilities in gestation. Traditional banks missed this opportunity
entirely, which is bizarre since payment transaction is supposedly their
business.
- Retail (aaS): Retail, particularly the success of Amazon, is
what launched the web as a business eldorado and the amount of retail on the web
continues to grow every year.
- Security (aaS): Sophos, Kaspersky, and
others offer security as a service. The actual mix of what you get varies; Spam
filtering was the initial security service and this industry has been growing
from there.
- Backup and Storage (aaS): Online storage as a
service has been available for quite some time. More recently, Mozy had garnered
attention as a from-home backup service and attracted even more attention when
EMC acquired it.
- Communications (aaS): It is arguable that
communications has always been sold as a service, with the telephone being the
access device. In any event, there are now a plethora of new communications
services (Skype, NetPhone, etc).
- Collaboration (aaS): Webex was the
first collaboration as a service web site. Now they are more collaborations
which are elevating methods to collaborate live (GoogleWave, CollectiveX,
Backpack, etc.). Some are more relevant to the virtual world which some
companies have used as a venue for virtual meetings (Second Life).
The
list for Anything-as-a-Service can go on, much like the business opportunities
for the Internet are endless. In this world of revamping old capabilities and
introducing new technologies, our Synergetic Technologies will prove to be the most
efficient, and smartest, way of building our business.