A couple of years ago analyst behemoth, Gartner Group, started talking about Cloud Brokers, about the same time that others started talking about Service Aggregators. In general terms this could be seen as one of those inevitable moments in the development of any new technology when options crop up in the growth of new terminology to describe and delineate its various components.
Brokers and aggregators are terms broadly identifying the new opportunity presented by the arrival of Cloud services: the need that many potential Cloud service users have for help in pulling together the tools, utilities, and services needed to help achieve a business objective. Most of those users are already pretty much up to speed on the principles of what the Cloud can offer their business potential once they have such services up and running. The practicalities of getting there are the issue and where the brokers/aggregators are pitching.
If some other business has the expertise to do it for customers, the cost-benefits are usually in favour of going ahead.
This year has seen not only growing interest in the capabilities of such service providers but also the growing pre-eminence of the term `broker’ as the collective noun. There is certainly a need for an accepted noun and I can see the caché associated with `broker’ as a choice. At the same time, however, it is one about which I have some qualms.
Not least of these are some of its dictionary definitions. For example, there is “a person who buys and sells goods or assets for others,” which is true up to a point, but hardly covers the scope of the job or the needs of the customer. There is also: “One that acts as an agent for others, as in negotiating contracts, purchases, or sales in return for a fee or commission,” which is closer but still, to me, misses some of the key tasks that the role should encompass.
`Aggregator’ is, to me, a better option as a definition. For example, the dictionary comes up with “a wholesale buyer or broker of a utility service, such as electricity or long-distance telephone service, who packages it and sells it.” To my mind, two words here – package and service – cover the essential requirements of the genre: the ability to package together those components - utilities, tools, applications and the rest - that to the user represent the totality of the service they require to successfully and expediently execute their business objectives.
And it is that user focus which then raises other, more significant doubts I have about the use of the word `broker’ and its ability to miss-inform and confuse potential Cloud service customers and users.
Gartner’s suggestions around the word gave us three different sub-divisions of the overall `broker’ market sector, each with lengthy definitions. Edited down these three are:
- Cloud Service Intermediation: An intermediation broker provides value added services on top of existing Cloudplatforms, such as identity or access management capabilities.
- Aggregation: An aggregation broker provides the "glue" to bring together multiple services and ensure the interoperability and security of data between systems.
- Service Arbitrage: A Cloud service arbitrage provides flexibility and “opportunistic choices” by offering multiple similar services to select from.
Yet aggregators will inevitably be offering intermediation, as the services they bring together will either add value or they will go out of business. They will also offer arbitrage by building up a panoply of services – with multiple choices to suit different requirements within a broadly but vertical market sector. For example, the sector might be `Retail’, but within that there is an enormous difference between the business needs of a global supermarket chain and a Bond Street jeweller.
The real downside of having three sub-divisions is then confusion, not least because the options are vendor-oriented rather than user-oriented. Users will be bombarded by vendors offering broadly similar capabilities yet all the while arguing vociferously in favour of their differences.
The vendors will then load up every available conference platform to confuse and obfuscate in the name of explaining the differences and why their bit of the solution is the best.
Users will then no doubt find themselves holding endless meetings trying to decide which option to take, with each no doubt having its champions amongst the staff.
Worst of all, the users might find themselves obliged to cut deals with vendors from each sub-division, when one deal with an `aggregator’ should suffice.
The vendors, of course, do get three different, smaller markets to pitch themselves at, enhancing their chances of appearing somewhere as a `leader’.
But all of it misses the point that, with the cloud, the pivot of emphasis has moved from `the technology’ to `the customer’. What the customers need is now the sole driving force, and the vendors that can identify what that service really needs to include, and deliver it with the least negative impact on the continued efficient running of the business, will be the ones that win.
Being the leader in an unnecessary sub-division of a marketplace will, however, do vendors little more service than buff their corporate egos.
