With the sudden and ubiquitous emergence of PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service), I thought I’d investigate several other "aaSes" as I always thought PaaS was something VC’s did.

• BaaS: This is a fish.
• CaaS: Commission on Accreditation of Ambulance Services (or the Chet Atkins Appreciation Society)
• DaaS: Dogs-as-a-Service.  Also known as Dogster.
• EaaS: Elephants-as-a-Service.  Also known as The Nature Channel.
• FaaS: How I generally drive my SL 55.
• GaaS: New pricing model.  Unlimited supply for $4 / hour.
• HaaS: Hardware-as-a-Service.  This what Amazon really sells.
• IaaS: Infrastructure-as-a-Service.  It’s in Wikipedia, so it must be true.
• JaaS: Java Authentication and Authorization Service.
• KaaS: The fat singer in the Mamas &the Papas.
• LaaS: A Mango flavored Indian drink; Local Area Augmentation Service.
• MaaS: Catholics-as-a-Service.  This is also Evangelicals 2.0.
• NaaS: Birds-as-a-Service (Northern Arizona Audubon Society).
• OaaS: Porn 2.0 – use your imagination or try xtube if you don’t know what I’m talking about.
• QaaS: A little known country in the UAE.
• RaaS: 17 different things – mostly systems of some sort.
• TaaS: The guys and gals that write the stories for the official news agency of Russia.
• UaaS: This domain for sale for $4675.  Invent your own aaS.
• VaaS: Warnakulasuriya Patabendige Ushantha Joseph Chaminda Vaas.
• WaaS: Weekend-as-a-Service.  This is what keeps me sane.
• XaaS: X-as-a-Service.  Coined by Scott Maxwell of OpenView in 2006.
• YaaS: What Yahoo is going to be called after the Microsoft acquisition (or maybe they will be "Yahoo Cloud Computing SP74").
• ZaaS: The giant tree that eats dust mites containing planets in Dr. Seuss books.

It all started with SaaS which those of us in the know refer to as ASP 2.0.  My heart beats quickly for the days of "hosting", "ASPs", and "On Demand."  Shoot – I even miss eSomething.  Fortunately, Cloud Computing will enable lots of TLA’s for us to enjoy.

I was going to respond to Fred’s post We Need A New Path To Liquidity in between my elephant meeting and my rocket ship meeting but I ended up reading all the comments as well as a bunch of the linked blogs (via TechMeme.)  As a result I’ve run out of time.  The comments are fascinating, as are some of the linked blogs.  Well worth a deep read.

Fred Wilson has an incredible post up this morning titled We Need A New Path To Liquidity.  I don’t agree with everything in it, but it’s a great, heartfelt post in the context of the gigantic Internet elephants stomping around trying to reconfigure themselves and consolidate things while accidentally crushing all the pretty little toys gathered at their feet trying to get (or having gotten) their attention.

I’m rushing off to go spend the morning with a bunch of my friends at one of the elephants so I don’t have time for a more thoughtful post – go read Fred’s to get a starting point for the discussion and I’ll try to join in later today.

Starbucks announced that today that you can hang out, drink coffee, eat high calorie baked goods, and surf the web for "free" for two hours (assuming you are drinking coffee and eating high calorie baked goods.)  This is due to a very smart move on AT&T’s part where they have displaced T-Mobile as the WiFi provider at Starbucks stores. 

I’m really surprised that T-Mobile let this deal get away from them.  I happily pay $10 / month to T-Mobile for WiFi service – the two places I use it 99.4% of the time are Starbucks and the United Red Carpet Club.  If AT&T takes the Red Carpet Club deal, T-Mobile is going to lose that incremental $10 / month from me.  I realize that "free for two hours" at Starbucks might not have kept me paying this $10, but I probably wouldn’t have noticed (or done anything) for a while.

Oracle buys BEA Systems for $8.5 billion.

Sun Microsoft Systems buys MySQL for about $1.0 billion.

Gregory Reyes – Brocade’s ex-CEO – gets 21 months in jail for backdating stock options.

What was it that Apple announced again yesterday?