Management as a Service (MaaS)

I have been reviewing as many Cloud Service providers as I can get my hands on.  I am building a database right now of them and their products, locations, and types of providers.   I am breaking them into the following types:

• Software as a Service (SaaS)
• Platform as a Service (PaaS)
• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
• Open Source
• Enterprise
• Education
• Government

Cloud service providers usually fit neatly into one or many of those categorizations without a problem.  Except for one group;  the growing number of cloud management software providers.

There are some that have their own data centers or platforms so they easily fit into a category.  However there are many service providers that purely provide a cloud management set of tools that work with one provider (Amazon) or several providers, and they offer no infrastructure or platform.  They are a software, but not the end user Software as a Service (SaaS) we are used to.

I have gone back and forth on this one, feeling they need their own categorization.  Then no….they are just a IaaS provider, or wait no Paas, wait no…SaaS.

I even discussed this with Audrey and she was intrigued enough to ask RWW readers if the 3 Common Acronyms for Cloud Services Sufficient?

I am now dubbing cloud management software as Management as a Service (MaaS).