Characteristics of a service
Service is such a blurry designation that a complete section will be necessary to give a good sense—rather than a single definition—of this concept.
As a service explained
The expression as a service is used in many formulations: SaaS for Software as a Service, PaaS for Platform as a Service, CaaS for Containers as a Service, and so on. Have you ever considered why such different things use this common denomination? This in itself gives maybe the best definition of what a service is: something that benefits from the advantages of something else without having to deal with the usually-associated externalities. A hotel room is a service because you benefit from a bed and a roof without needing to buy and maintain a house, or even clean the room. SaaS is a service because you can use the software (manipulating its interface, storing data and retrieving it, realizing complex computations, and exporting the results) without having to install...
