What is a content-as-a-service (CaaS)?

Here’s another buzzword playing a role in the headless CMS realm.

Various headless CMS vendors are claiming that their model of content management can be described as ‘Content-as-a-Service’ (CaaS), a sub-set of ‘Software-as-a-Service’ (SaaS).

Software-as-a-Service isn’t about the technical inner-workings of a CMS. Instead, it’s the model used by vendors — and favored by brands — to sell their software.

Instead of building their own technology, or buying licensing fees from software vendors, many brands are turning towards cloud-based software that they can pay a monthly subscription for. The software is managed and hosted by the vendor, leaving the brand to “borrow” the technology to build and scale their digital presence. Hence, it’s a software, but in the form of a service.

As headless content management gained traction, so did the term Content-as-a-Service, because, you know, a headless CMS is all about the content, and nothing but the content.

It’s worth noting that the demand for SaaS products is growing exponentially, with IDC forecasting that by 2020, penetration of software as a service versus traditional software deployment will be over 25%.

So, if decoupled CMS gives you the balance of both worlds (headlessness plus front-end goodies) when it comes to content management, and a cloud-based SaaS (or CaaS, if you want to be super specific) model is the best way to “borrow” that technology. I guess the ideal solution would be a Decoupled SaaS CMS. If only such a platform existed…