This phrase was used quite a bit this week at the Gartner AADI conference and while I am pretty skeptical when it comes to new acronyms and technology names, i do rather like this one for two reasons.  First it allows us to cut through some of the ambiguity of the SaaS/PaaS layers by getting to the heart of a very important cross-section of capabilities.  Second, this term starts moving us from the current understanding of applications as silo'd sets of user experiences based on antiquated boundaries into a set of discrete capabilities that should be location transparent and composable.  While there is a danger in overusing the "aaS" acronym to turn each possible capability (security, integration, data, search, mapping, etc) into a new acronym, this name does provide the opportunity to have constructive conversations on how capabilities can be both enabled and leveraged through APaaS to enable the next generation of distributed applications.