ASP to SAAS to Clouds -- Oh my!

“We believe very strongly that they can't treat it as a separate business unit,” Jamcracker's Crawford said. “The best way to sell value-added services is to make it appear they are one in the same or are bundled very tightly with existing core [network] services. Don't treat it as a skunkworks project on the side, but as something that flows from your primary business.”

STYLES OF SAAS AND CLOUD COMPUTING

Software as a Service (Consumer): Users, mainly consumers but also increasingly “pro-sumer” users, access relatively simple software applications via a Web browser. Applications include Webmail; light office productivity apps such as Google Apps; and, technically, Web applications such as Flickr, Twitter or YouTube.

Software as a Service (Enterprise): Software applications delivered as services to business users can range from messaging to managed security (at the enterprisewide or individual desktop level) to business process applications such as customer relationship management, enterprise resource planning, marketing automation and more.

Platform as a Service: Development platforms and tools delivered and supported as a service. Examples include Salesforce.com's Force.com, Google's AppEngine, and start-ups such as Coghead and LongJump.

Computing as a Service (Cloud Computing): Raw computing capabilities — including processing, storage, databases and more — delivered online as a service and typically utility-priced. Enterprises (or in some cases individual users) buy what they need, and providers benefit from utility economics by scaling their virtual backbones based on relatively measurable and consistent demand forecasts.

Hybrid models: Web hosts have long supported co-location models in which they manage software and hardware on behalf of a user. In a hybrid cloud model, users may purchase some computing services on a utility model and then manage — or have their provider manage — certain systems that make more sense installed on site, such as local storage or edge routers.