Data as a Service (DaaS) is a new term/concept and so I think you'll likely get a different answer depending on the viewpoint of the person answering. The quote that Cody provided is a pretty techie answer. As a former employee of a data integration company, this feels much closer to how I would envision a member of the IT team defining the term. But I'm a direct marketer & marketing ops gal at heart, and I am definitely not that techie!

The best answer that I've seen was posted on the blog ProgrammableWeb, by guest blogger Pete Soderling. Here was his answer:

"DaaS is delivering specific, valuable data on demand. A simple example makes it clearer. Hoover’s, a Dunn & Bradstreet company, offer business data. On it’s own, it’s a hodgepodge of names, titles, addresses and other company information. However, via an integration with Salesforce.com, Hoover’s streams data on specific leads directly to sales teams before they contact people to make a sale."

He sites many other examples and goes on to talk about the pricing model for Daas. You can read it all here: http://blog.programmableweb.com/2010/08/26/data-as-a-service-pricing-models-f...

This definition is, I think, much closer to what will become the standard definition of DaaS - at least if Salesforce has much to say about it. With their recent acquisition of Jigsaw, who would be considered a DaaS provider, it's likely that they will begin to use the DaaS term much more frequently.

At Salesify, our sales team has also used the DaaS term when speaking with clients although the term is not in any of our official marketing materials! Since we provide custom built, phone verified B2B contact lists that get built out when ordered by a client, our version of DaaS is much closer to a true service. We provide clients with targeted lists for use in telemarketing and other outbound marketing activities based on their exact targeting requirements (around industry, company size, job role, etc) and we provide these lists at a rate that they can consume thus ensuring data is fresh. This could be weekly, monthly, quarterly at whatever volume they need. Thus the concept of on demand from our viewpoint -- researching and delivering data exactly when they need it to fuel new business.

Cody Young

VP Business Development, Northbound DGS

Posted on Nov. 9, 2010

Hi Davis,

The best definition I have found comes from Jill Dyché, Partner and co-founder at Baseline Consulting. Here it goes:

What is data-as-a-service? What are the benefits of data-as-a-service?

"The concept of data-as-a-service (DaaS) basically advocates the view that -- with the emergence of service-oriented architecture (SOA), which includes standardized processes for accessing data "where it lives" -- the actual platform on which the data resides doesn't matter. With data-as-a-service, any business process can access data wherever it resides. Data-as-a-service began with the notion that data quality could happen in a centralized place, cleansing and enriching data and offering it to different systems, applications or users, irrespective of where they were in the organization or on the network. This has now been replaced with master data management (MDM) and customer data integration (CDI) solutions, accompanying a master data "hub" on which the golden record of the customer (or product, or asset, etc.) resides, and is available as a service (e.g., "Get Customer") to any application that has the services to access it.

Many people hear data-as-a-service and think "outsourcing." While outsourced data is possible, we don't recommend it. We think companies should manage and own their own data assets--again, the platform matters less and can thus be outsourced if the business processes and data are solid. We see architecture groups enabling de-facto master data hubs and offering them as a service to ensure the sanctioned "single version of the truth" is available to everyone."