Monthly Archive:: November 2014

That’s My Girl, but It Ain’t My Truck

The cowboy song by Rhett Akins, “That Ain’t My Truck,” where he discovers his girl has left him for another guy, reminds me of the anti-incumbency bias occurring in today’s global services marketplace. What’s causing clients’ infidelity to their incumbent providers? I believe many incumbent service providers find themselves displaced today because of three

Next-Generation Options Change Relationships with Service Providers

The 16th century political theorist Machiavelli wrote that there is “nothing more dangerous, or more doubtful of success, than to attempt to introduce a new order of things.” I think we should remember his words as we embark on the journey to embrace the next-generation solutions entering the services marketplace. Next-generation options are now

Years of Plenty Followed by Years of Starvation for RIM Service Providers

Right now Remote Infrastructure Management (RIM) service providers are enjoying explosive growth as they take share from asset-heavy players. The labor arbitrage market is disintermediating or successfully attacking the traditional asset-heavy infrastructure space. But in every boom are the seeds of undoing. It reminds me of the story of Joseph in the Biblical book

Sales Strategy Shift in the Cloud Services Market

The fact that enterprises are making a strategic intent shift to cloud and as-a-service models changes more than the service delivery model. It also changes the value proposition and therefore causes implications for provider’s sales strategies. For starters, the focus turns away from the provider’s capabilities. Sure, those capabilities are still important. But with

Goldilocks-Sized Service Providers

Businesses today actively seek — and happily find — a different kind of service provider. Like the fairy tale Goldilocks sizing choices among the three bears, they find some providers are too large, some are too small, but others are just right. The just right players are growing spectacularly. But I believe it’s mainly

Implications for the Application Development Outsourcing Market from Strategic Intent to Cloud

The current enterprise shift in strategic intent toward cloud services has major implications for the outsourcing market. I’ve blogged about the implications for the infrastructure outsourcing market. Clearly the strategic shift will also affect application development outsourcing. We see three major implications for this market. Everest Group is working with large enterprises as they