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Comment by mechanical_fish | Hacker News Reader

Okay, I'm supposed to use ambiguous, obscure, or unpronounceable acronyms when speaking to people?

Maybe we've reached the point where non-geeks know what "SaaS" is, and don't confuse it with the attitude or the statistical software or anything else. But does anyone outside of Silicon Valley recognize "PaaS" when I use it in a sentence? Anybody want to tell me how to pronounce "IaaS" without inadvertently slandering myself?

Maybe the time has come when the general public needs more fine-grained terms for what folks have come to call "cloud computing", but I doubt these are the right terms.

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I agree with you, in order to fix a problem the article presents terms that are not suitable.

For instance in the context of a service like gmail, why we should talk about "cloud" or say "SaaS" when it is as simple as a "web application"?

PaaS IMHO it's better translated as "cloud applications platform", or "cloud application service".

Finally I don't think IaaS is acceptable as it covers too much things, especially two things that I would simply call:

* Virtual Machine Service (EC2, Linode, ...)

* Cloud Storage Service (S3, Dropbox, ...)

Edit: yes... I used three times Cloud in the end, so at least for me the problem is that "Cloud" alone means very little.

I think Dropbox is considered SaaS (and doesn't precisely fit your definition of "web application"). I would put S3 into PaaS as it boils down to a storage platform.

Right now I agree with saying IaaS is just a VM service, but I'd hesitate because there may be future changes that invalidate that connection.

Keep in mind these terms are provider-centric not customer-centric. For example, Amazon provides their networking and computer infrastructure as a service to you the customer. You realize this service as VMs. Similarly, GAE provides a platform for you to use, and you realize this as a place to run your cloud application. And to finish the triad off, SaaS provides customers with software and they realize it as an application. So it somewhat depends on if you are looking at these things from a customer perspective or a provider perspective.

I believe this NIST document provides fairly clear terminology: http://www.nist.gov/manuscript-publication-search.cfm?pub_id...

> "Cloud" is what marketing and non-technical people use. I'm ok with that.

I would assume this means he'll use the general "cloud" term when talking with non-geeks.

Technical people should know that [SPI]aaS are specific parts of the "cloud." Within technical communities, the correct terms should be used to avoid ambiguity. It's about knowing your audience and making sure they can relate to you.

"IaaS" is often pronounced "ice". And "Paas"/"Saas" is "pass"/"sass". Useful for geeks. "Cloud" works for non-geeks.

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