A Rose by Any Other Name
Shakespeare said a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. However, what the eternal bard did not say but easily could have is that it would not have sold as well. The rose that’s catching fire now in the marketplace is as-a-service offerings. But service providers are confusing the market.
As-a-service offerings take a business function (CRM, HR recruitment, etc.) and provide it on a consumption basis (pay for it as used) and bundle the entire end-to-end process including hosting the application, the network and often some business function.
It’s interesting to see these function ideas brought to the market, and it’s the most powerful and disruptive force in services today. Providers range from startups such as ZenCash, which delivers receivables as a service, to more established companies such as Salesforce for CRM as a service. Many of the Indian providers’ as-a-service offerings come in the model of platforms or as managed services.
No matter what the providers call their offerings, all the marketing terms are names for very similar business constructs. The providers seek to differentiate themselves by naming the offering using different terminology in an effort to claim that they’re different. But the market largely ignores these efforts. Why?
Because, a rose by any other name may be just as sweet, but people looking for roses don’t stop to look at flowers called something else. Buyers adopt offerings that they recognize as something they want. The sweet thing the market now recognizes it wants is the power of consumption and end-to-end functionality — which it recognizes as buying an “as a-service” offering.
Providers can deliver an as-a-service offering off a common platform or build it unique. But the market is signaling that “as-a-service” has become the recognized term for what the market wants — simplicity and easy-to-adopt functionality instead of past experiences with big, complex projects that require long lead time and are complicated and risky to implement.
Calling as-a-service offerings by different terms just confuses the market and slows down growth.
Photo credit: Yannis
