The over-use, misuse and hijacking of the term cloud computing has been with us for some time now. It has become the buzzword-du-jour of the technology industry, with ever more specialized variants emerging. With increasing frequency, we hear related terms such as software-as-a-service (SaaS), infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS).
The emerging data-as-a-service (DaaS) is, perhaps, the most interesting. The barriers to entry for a startup or new player in this field are, potentially, the lowest of any of the as-a-service sub-genres. Firstly, unlike IaaS or PaaS, there is no implied customer hardware leasing with this type of service. Secondly, unlike its elder and more celebrated cousin SaaS, DaaS does not necessarily require providing customer access to software packages (in this case that might be structured or unstructured data management software such as relational database management systems (RDBMS)). Instead, a compelling DaaS solution need only provide a logical and robust API to a set of data -- potentially stored elsewhere and managed by a different third-party -- served up in a variety of formats for the contemporary web. Such formats would currently include variants of XML, JSON, and CSV.
When the dust settles, I can conceive that the principles behind DaaS provide the infrastructure for maintaining data synchronization between our devices. Currently, such synchronization is hidden behind proprietary and opaque processes designed and maintained exclusively by hardware and software vendors such as Apple, Google and Microsoft.
I am mildly optimistic that the industry standards committees will forge a path to empower such innovation. With the expected continued dominance of mobile devices and the relative immaturity of both DaaS and data synchronization, I think I see a big, juicy plum.
