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Definition[]

The -aaS family of acronyms "refers to the on-demand services that have replaced the more traditional one-time, high-investment technologies of the past."[1]

Overview[]

The key characteristics of an as-a-Service (-aaS) offering include:

  • Rapid elasticity: Capabilities can be rapidly and elastically provisioned to quickly scale up and rapidly released to quickly scale down.
  • Ubiquitous network access: Capabilities are available over the network and accessed through standard mechanisms that promote use by heterogeneous thin or thick client platforms (e.g., mobile phones and laptops, etc.).
  • Pay per use: Capabilities are charged using a metered, fee-for-service, or advertising-based billing model to promote optimisation of resource use.
  • On-demand self-service: A consumer can unilaterally provision computing capabilities, such as server time and network storage, as needed without requiring human interaction with each service's provider.
  • Location independent data centres: The provider's computing resources are usually pooled to serve all consumers using a multi-tenant model, with different physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according to consumer demand.[2]

References[]

  1. Techopedia, "10 Tech Acronyms You Must Know" (full-text).
  2. MASHe, "Analytics Reconnoitre — AaaS/DaaS: Analytics as a service, data as a service" (full-text).

See also[]

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