SaaS vs. Cloud Definitions on Twitter

Yesterday’s post from Ken received some interesting commentary on the definition of SaaS vs. Cloud Computing. I decided to take discussion to the LucidEra Twitter feed. I “tweeted” the following:

• Cloud Computing = infrastructure (processing power + storage) available over the Web
• SaaS = apps and services built on/in the Cloud

Here’s what people had to say about these definitions:

@jonathaneunice:
Also, all things tend to get labeled with the newer, trendier terms. Currently, that favors Cloud, subsuming SaaS. OTOH once bright line btwn apps, services, infrastructure now blurry curves.

@vtri:
I agree. Particularly as some SaaS will run on the Cloud, but not all. Cloud is not the best name, but better than *aaS sillyness

@shawnrog:
Agreed, I like the definition.

@RobPaller:
Yes on The Cloud. SaaS doesn’t sound much different than what ASPs are trying to accomplish. (I am probably missing something)

@BrentO:
I’ve heard vendors talking about internal clouds - shared resource pools that can quickly scale up/down like external clouds.

What do you think? You can join the discussion here, or add your comments / feedback below.

posted by Darren Cunningham at 1:57 pm

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