“IT as a service is a game changer. Because you now have components of the IT department existing in the cloud, you free your in-house IT staff to shift from a maintenance mode to an innovation mode. As such, your IT department can focus on achieving business goals, creating innovative solutions, and driving sales rather than upgrading individual user’s computers and firefighting everyday problems.”
Daniel Burrus, here on Huffington Post.
As Daniel states, XaaS is a game changer for enterprise because it frees up capital that would otherwise be spent on IT infrastructure and it frees up resources that would otherwise be maintaining that infrastructure. XaaS provides the enterprise market with the flexibility to come up with an idea, spin up a server, try the idea out and then shut down the server (and costs) without the lead times and costs of managing your own servers.
Daniel also goes on to say “advances in cloud computing and virtualization, over the next five years we will transform how we sell, market, communicate, collaborate, innovate, train, and educate.”
So, as enterprise transforms, opportunities exist.
Interestingly, I have a suspicion that the opportunities don’t exist where many carriers and vendors think they will. Generally speaking, they seem to believe that the opportunities lie within the compute / virtualisation platforms that will power the cloud. I feel that we’re already heading down the path of commoditisation of the platforms.
I feel that the opportunities lie in the ability to provide innovative tools that “transform how we sell, market, communicate, collaborate, innovate, train, and educate.” Ohh, and in providing innovative tools that allows CSPs and enterprise to monitor and manage their clouds.
PS. As an industry, we’re also on the lookout for the game-changer that will allow in-house OSS staff to shift from a maintenance mode to an innovation mode. What do you think it will be? Are third-party OSSaaS tools already delivering this vision in a small part for CSPs?