I've been thinking about jazz bands. Why? I’ll try and explain.
One of the thoughts that keeps reappearing in my addled brain is that one of the real fundamentals that Cloud Computing changes has nothing to do with technology, but a great deal to do with 'brand'. What is more, that the issue of brand is, for the existing major systems and software vendors, coming into contention with their collective corporate egos.
Given that the most significant change Cloud Computing introduces is the switch from 'what technology can offer users' to 'what services do users need to achieve their business/personal/whatever goals', this means that the most important brand names also switch. The leading technology brands will be, to a large percentage of potential users, irrelevant or even unknown as Cloud Computing expands, and yet many of them still seem immensely keen on pushing themselves forward as the dominant forces in the development of Cloud.
As an aside, here is a little example of why I think they're getting it wrong. One of the most popular and well-known brand names is iPhone. It is, I suspect, already more widely recognised than its maker, Apple. Yet the real key to iPhone's success would seem to be the vast and rapidly growing range of apps which are available. So it will not be long before the apps themselves become better known brands than iPhone, and certainly better known than Apple. It is fast becoming the apps that people are after – they just have to buy an iPhone to get at them.
So it may not be long before business sense says that Apple must bury its corporate ego – and in the process just make sure it is making a percentage on every app being sold. In the end, of course, it should really let every mobile service sell iPhones, and indeed let other manufacturers make them. That percentage on the apps will do very nicely. The danger is that, by protecting their perception of their own brand, they push users to other platforms through frustration if nothing else.
This can then be mapped onto Cloud Computing generally. If large vendors keep pushing their own brands as 'the solution to everything and anything in the Cloud' they will inevitably lose out. Many potential customers either won't know the brand well, or may even be put off by bigvendoritis.
When it comes to the Cloud, many companies will be part of the mix that creates the services the users actually need. There will be systems providers, datacentre service providers, software providers, consultants, architects and, in many cases, resellers and small systems integrators all in the loop, and all of them with brands that will be known to some potential customers. In many cases, the same companies will be involved in providing different users with similar services packages. But that does not mean that every contract has to be led by Company X, or that Company Y’s logo and brand slogans have to have equal prominence in the grab for a potential customer's mindshare.
In practice, a good bit of future success in the Cloud will come from using the brand name most known by or associated with a customer or marketplace – and to hell with petulance about protecting brand image.
And this is where jazz bands come in. It is not uncommon for the same four musicians to work under different names – the John Doe Quartet, the Fred Blogs Quartet and so on, depending on which one of them is best known to a particular promoter or club audience. They often even play similar repertoires. But the audience gets what they want, and the band gets the work without too many high horses needing to be stood on.
That is the way Cloud services will be pushed out faster and with a better response.
The Cloud and all that jazz
Posted by icefire on Tue, 20/07/2010 - 12:07Yes I agree we happily offer whitelabel options to partners for our ezyaccounts com business applications. Building brands is expensive so its better to focus on delivering great products and value for money services. Had'nt thought of the Jazz band analogy - if the music is good fans will multiply.
API solutions in their own right .......
Posted by jc on Tue, 20/07/2010 - 12:33Surely the logical extension of this is to focus on api (WebService) vendors where they are independant but using the providers own api's and enhancing them for specific solutions
In fact there is probably a niche for providers that deliver WebServices enabling migration from one Cloud system to another - at which point we move towards provider independance and do away with proprietry structures etc.
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