A new a-c-r-o-n-y-m.

During the glory and bust of the dot-com days, we called it an ASP. Yes, Application Service Provider, although I am quite sure that nine of ten people back then could not have told me what it meant. But man was it sexy at the time to tell someone you were working at an A-S-P!

Then, since ASP become synonymous with dot-bust (even if it they were on to something with the notion of recurring revenue business models), we started to call it Hosted. Also, unlikely at the time that most people knew what that meant. Hosted for most had more to do with entertainment that anything else.

Another change. With 2.0 in the works, the Web became cool again. This time, with still little change in what it represented, we started to have to use the term Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) in order to get funded by a forward thinking VC (aren't they all?). But for the end user, still little understanding of what we meant.

And now, just as the world is figuring out what an SaaS is, comes another new term for the same old thing. Introducing....CaaS. Communications-as-a-Service. Finally something that explains what a hosted voice communication application service provider in the SaaS business really is.

Sarcasm aside, I do like the last one. Although, like my friends at ifbyphone remind me all the time (as relatively new entrants into the telecom space), telcos have been CaaS's for a very long time...Think about that one.

Signing off.