So lately I've been thinking a lot about the next generation of IT. Software + services... While the concepts for Web 2.0 are intriguing many questions come to mind. What is a good candidate for Web 2.0 especially if it’s not maintained inside the corporate infrastructure?
The approach is very attractive but introduces many new obstacles, how do we ensure the integrity of transactions, data ownership issues, transparency. As services grow and mature they tend to change significantly over time with inevitable impact on subscribers. How do we continue to reduce TCO in this type of environment? Can subscribers create prescriptive contracts that prevent this from occurring? On the provider side of the house are there design patterns that allow for providing services flexibly to a multitude of subscribers without incurring the high costs of maintenance?
What is required here will likely turn out to cause providers to migrate in one of several directions.
The first option will be to provide only services that are either marginal or no value add to the majority of corporate businesses. Services that I see falling in grouping will likely fall within the IT space. Messaging services- IM, SMS, etc...
Level two services will likely provide services that are designed to replace existing data interchanges such as EDI. AS2 and Internet EDI really fill this space currently but I can foresee a day when the XML standards based spaces solidify and begin to define Contract based data exchange that will allow businesses to move away from internal EDI and or VAN based exchange. The main hurtle to overcome here will be timing as the standards based bodies do not move nearly as quickly as the remainder of the industry creating contention between technology and standards.
Finally, in the software +services arena there will be those who approach their services as core infrastructure that are extended through interfaces. These will be provided as the contract for subscribers that can be easily added to or extended and managed for each customers need. A great deal of effort will have to be invested in the design and architecture by those who choose this road. Companies that expend the effort up front to design for flexibility will be the winners in this space. Once established as a framework mission critical services as well as the more mundane service can be managed via a single infrastructure achieving economies of scale on the support model. Decisions to implement this strategy (enterprise wide vs. mission critical) will then become a simple question of economics.