A delightful little acronym that I’ve noticed popping up more and more is this one: SaaS (apparently the last ‘s’ is capitalised but the a’s are not).

The ever-useful www.acronymfinder.com was kind enough to fill me in

Unsure and unconvinced I hit up Wikipedia.

There’s a lot of words on that page. Nice guy that I am I persevered so you don’t have to – long story short, it means Web application.

What followed was an interesting conversation with myself. Take a look at the related articles in both the Wiki pages for SaaS and Web application. What do you find? An outrageous number of buzzwords. And yet industry types wonder why non-web folk can switch off during a slang-laden speech. In part I think it’s because developers feel the need to apply an overly complex label to every facet of our business (the social retardation doesn’t help either I guess).

Case in point: Web 2.0. Personally I think it serves as little more than a phrase that budding valley boys can use when pitching to VC’s (money men). Web 2.0 represents the online business model without a business model, not a distinct technological evolution that certain pundits claim it to be. And now we have SaaS, and the NZ Herald dumbing down the Wiki page in a Telecom advertorial. Because if there’s any company that needs more money from public fear, uncertainty and doubt; its clearly Telecom.

We’re only human here at MaxGen. I’m sure on occasion our clients completely ignore our jargon – and fair enough too. We do however try our best to keep it simple and in plain English. Something that we feel isn’t too difficult to accomplish when you have a decent grasp of customer needs and wants.

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