What Is XaaS?
XaaS stands for Anything as a Service (or more accurately X as a Service). Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offerings have ballooned in the past few years, and with them came a new flood of ideas on what to monetize next. Databases as a Service (DBaaS), Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS or BDR), and Networks as a Service (NaaS) expanded on the original fixed platforms (among countless others). If it could talk to a network, and more and more things could, it could be outsourced.
Anything can be a service. Everything can be a service. Different services can be packaged up and delivered as a new service. The possibilities are endless.
Origin
The proliferation of more and more powerful, internet connected devices and the penetration of broadband internet lead to a market ripe for service offerings. The general business trend to reduce volatile costs for analytic and metric driven business further pushed these offerings into the limelight. Managing an on-premise server for an application could be costly for the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for any given application. Certain offerings required server grade workstations which had to be upgraded regularly as well as licensing costs per station and/or user.
