The letter of the law

Bob Dalton hints there may be no escape from the alphabet soup of IT acronymisation

In an industry awash with acronyms, cloud computing has added to the alphabet soup with acronyms such as SaaS, IaaS and even HaaS (Hardware-as-a-Service).

So can I nobly claim that we are seeking to buck this trend? Are we winding the clock back to some glorious age when initials were largely reserved for people and countries? Well… erm, no.

The fact is, as confusing, distracting and downright annoying as acronyms may be, they are also a jolly useful way of naming things, representing both a handy label and (generally) some clue as to what said handle represents.

In fact, the burst of cloud-related acronyms – specifically the 'as-a-service' concept – has actually given us a relevant model for the kind of services we provide for the channel.

The argument for organisations to take software, hardware and infrastructure as a service is a strong and compelling one. Why go to the expense and risk of buying and building your own, particularly when it is in a non-core area or a technology where you have little skill or track record?

However, there's the rub. There is still a strong undercurrent of 'not invented here' in both enterprises and the channel organisations that serve them. We all share it to some extent; for us to hand over key elements of our underlying delivery capability, we have to believe the service will at least match our own capabilities or, hopefully, exceed them.

In addressing this challenge, we have been guilty of adding to the alphabet soup with our ISO-certified 'service-as-a-service' offerings – from project management (PMaaS), design (DaaS) and global support (GSaaS). Guilty as charged, your honour.

Bob Dalton is chief executive officer of Intact Group