The Futures..&....Options....for services
Thursday, August 5, 2010
So what is the future of services?
It is a no brainer that if possible, both consumers and enterprises would eventually be happy to consume IT as a service, and not as a mix of products which they have to buy and get it all integrated…
It is a big "if" though.....it is anybody's guess as to the time it will take for IT vendors and technologies to consolidate and morph in a manner that will make it possible for IT to be consumed as a service by users…
Some are betting that it will happen sooner than later…that IT will very soon be a utility and enterprises and consumers will consume it on tap…and many others including the big giants are sure, are hoping that technology is too complex for that kind of model to become a reality anytime in distant future….
In the domain of “IT as a utility” model, there are again different options….
you could have the dominant “I do it all” model being proposed by Oracle where you go to Oracle for the entire stack including hardware/dabase/applications/analytics….it is simple…it is nice but it is a lock in….
or... you could have the current plethora of choices offered by IaaS/PaaS/SaaS vendors where you have choice but the enterprise IT has to figure out how it integrates with the internal islands…and manage multiple XaaS providers….
Services companies need to place bets now….on the futures possible and the options they have given the future they think is the most probable.
There is a big opportunity in all the integration challenges but they also face a big risk in the loss of the managed services business as enterprises move towards public cloud…
Services companies will need to be careful about the future they bet upon, and the options they choose….for the stakes are high….
And of course you have the easier “Ostrich” option of doing nothing and assuming that the world will not change…rather demanding that it not change….and there are enough players who will choose that option as well…..
posted by Anirudh Joshi @ 10:59 AM,
2 Comments:
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At August 5, 2010 at 11:30 AM,
su said...
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Interesting perspective. IT is a commodity. I was going through one of the analyst reports that said by 2012, services will be dominant way of buying IT. This is very evident with the onset of Cloud, pay per use etc. It is as simple as the way you get an electricity bill.. the same way we will receive a bill for IT/ bandwidth usage. The change is in the mindset.. the way we think. If enterprises do not change / adapt what is best for them, then they will become laggards...and by that time competition would have already established their credibility and mindshare. It will be loss of competitive advantage.
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At August 5, 2010 at 6:13 PM,
Unknown said...
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Really good insight. If IT becomes an on tap, commodity... what will happen to the existing sales and delivery structures of all the IT providers? .. scary thought
