platform as a service

In doing some due diligence for one of my non-profit clients, I am discovering a newly coined term: "Platform as a Service". SalesForce.com is the leading CRM vendor using this phrase regarding their APEX Code platform. They host the code in an on-demand SaaS way enabling users to build custom apps and deploy them in a hosted environment. Other companies enabling the platform as a service is NING, a private label social networking company and Kintera, a non-profit CRM/CMS company. NING is built from the ground up to be a platform and Kintera has revved their code to enable a platform as a service with their Kintera Connect program