Are You In The Cloud, Or Using SaaS?
A byproduct of the tech industry is buzzwords. We all know them: Web 2.0, semantic Web, social media and, of late, Software-as-a-Service and cloud computing. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, we all use them … but how well?
A post from The Fortiva Blog fell into my RSS reader this morning and the title – “What is the Difference Between Cloud Computing and SaaS?” – immediately caught my eye.
“You know what?” I thought. “I have no idea.”
I had always assumed that they were one in the same, cloud computing being a new buzzword that seemed more airy and ethereal than SaaS, which admittedly sounds a bit rigid and techie. Not so, said the post’s author, who referenced a new Gartner study, which outlines the parameters of cloud computing. Basically, the study defines cloud computing as anything that uses the Internet to allow people to connect to technological services. Widgets, for example, are an example of cloud computing, as are – as the blog post points out – Facebook and eBay.
SaaS, on the other hand, is when a user pulls a hosted tool from the Internet to use. Gartner also said it “allows a sharing of application processing and storage resources in a one-to-many environment…on a pay-for-use basis, or as a subscription.” For example, our clients SuccessFactors, Daptiv and Awareness are all have hosted software that users access through the cloud. The difference being that in SaaS, you use the Web to pull a service down on to your computer, cloud computing uses the Web to connect you to services.
It’s a bit of an obscure difference, but important in that these services require different architecture, functionality and serve different purposes. And you’ll sound smarter too.
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LaunchSquad : Blogs : Exclamation
Posted on August 15th, 2008 at 5:48 am.
[...] we’ve discussed previously on Exclamation, cloud computing is an increasingly used buzzword and is getting more attention in IT media. Cloud computing has [...]