Does anyone remember `disintermediation’? This was the clarion call of the late 90s and early naughties (sorry, noughties, how Freudian of me) which led us to believe that the web would allow us to trade directly with the manufacturers of products, bypassing all those intermediate stages such as wholesalers, distributors, retailers and the like that got in the way and added a mark up on the price.
The idea was that by going direct we could get the best possible price `direct from the factory gate’ It has happened that way to an extent, most obviously on the high street, but not half as much as many thought likely. Instead, the web has opened up the opportunity for a spot of `reintermediation’ – the arrival of new intermediaries that join us to the sources of what we would like to buy.
In practice, it is not quite intermediates that are appearing, and neither is their value proposition questionable. Instead, today’s developments are about fattening and enriching what appears to users as a single entity but which may consist of several contributing intermediaries. This comes about as users move inexorably from running applications to consuming services – whether internally or externally sourced. The range and diversity of code components that go to creating those services are going to expand greatly, and will come from a growing network of intermediaries, and most of the time the end users will not know any of them.
It will be the managed services providers that become the primary – though almost certainly unseen – intermediary that underpins most of the other component sources, and some are really starting to gear up for such a marketplace. Vialtus Solutions is one that I have come across that makes a good working example of how things might develop. The key factor, in a way, is one of market perceptions and branding as much as anything. I know the word `branding’ often presupposes smoke, mirrors and lots of flim-flam, but in this context I think it actually makes sense. Here, defining the scope of the early brands will set out the stall of how exostructures/clouds work, what they can offer and how users exploit them.
Probably better known to old hands as the business market operation of Pipex, Vialtus is no stranger to the provision of large scale interconnectivity and datacentre services. But CEO Maria Cappella recognises that there has to be more now, otherwise it runs the risk of just preaching to the knowledgeable converted. The company’s answer is defining its offerings as the Data Centre to Device (DC2D) architecture.
That branding covers a good deal more than just the provision of datacentre grunt. At one end it also covers a wide range of accreditations, such as ISO and ITIL, which suggest it understands and can support the issues, processes and operational requirements of a wide range of businesses. At the other end are tools and consultancy services that can help users adapt their information input and delivery to whatever client devices are most appropriate to their business – and with the pace of development here that is something often easier to say than do, in practice.
Cappella’s target market for now is the business market, where the company has a long track record. That is certainly where the value of this branding exercise will first come into its own. If users start to accept that the brand encompasses the desired solution they are seeking, then they need ask fewer questions. It is same effect as `Bentley equals luxury’ or `Ferrari equals speed’ and both equal `class’.
But the business user is only a part of the target, for Cappella is aware that the SaaS marketplace has huge potential – from ISVs, resellers and many other businesses with brand leadership in their own backyard. Many of them are, as yet, still nervous of the how’s, why’s and when’s of making the step from traditional business models to the SaaS model. So the growth in the development and acceptance of managed services brands will, in practice, be a very important lever on the rate at which new SaaS ventures get launched, for the fundamentals of service provision will become a no-brainer – a bit like renting an office from an estate agent, rather than trying to build the office yourself.
So watch for many more branding exercises to appear from the managed services community as they realise they need to position their capabilities in `look and feel’ terms that their target markets understand. As Cappella suggested, as the baseline for businesses becomes the WAN rather than LAN, service provision becomes a logistics issue rather than a technology one. And in the same way they might choose between Pickford or Eddie Stobart, so SaaS newcomers will be choosing their hosting environment – and getting new services out to the users faster.
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