Time and time again, technology is proving itself to be an enabler of both organizational and personal transformation. Initiatives such as service oriented architecture, cloud and pervasive analytics are opening up new possibilities and opportunities for growth.
More than anything, SOA, cloud and analytics are paving the way for the composite or loosely coupled company – which may be an entity that delivers solutions to customers via an aggregation of third-party services, provided on an on-demand basis to meet customer demands. Most of these services will be passed through as cloud-based services, both from within the enterprise and from outside.
The first phase of the Informatica Marketplace, which opens up a 52,000-member-strong community of buyers and sellers to share and leverage data integration solutions, is a great example of this emerging trend. Once the Marketplace is open for business, it will provide a central location for the community members to contribute mappings, mapplets, connectors, templates, dictionaries, vertical solutions and more. Buyers and sellers will have an open marketplace for a broad range of data integration components and solutions. Fellow Perspectives contributor Judy Ko provides some insights on the community effect of the Informatica Marketplace.
Another emerging model in this realm is the “app store,” best known through Apple and Amazon. But the app store is something enterprises can look at for both internal and external opportunities. Dion Hinchcliffe, well known as a Web Oriented Architecture visionary, recently published some thoughts about the app store model and how it’s re-shaping our perceptions of how a software delivery system should function.
That is, the app store supports an ecosystem of developers and creators, but acts as a governance mechanism to make sure any malicious stuff doesn’t degrade and contaminate the ecosystem.
Is this entrepreneurial spirit something that larger enterprises, particularly the Global 1000, would be capable or willing to digest? After all, larger enterprises usually have their own humongous internal IT development shops. But, some observers point out that some of the largest and most progressive companies may, in fact, be the most enthusiastic embracers of the virtual, componentized way of doing business through online marketplaces.
A couple of years ago, I heard Mohan Sawhney, professor at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management describe how the best-run companies are becoming “orchestrators” of networks of services, versus actual producers. Mobile phone companies provide a good example of this orchestrator role, in that “they don’t do anything themselves, they just collect the money.”
To achieve the orchestration, especially in terms of software-based services, companies may find their best option is to turn to third-party marketplaces that can provide the necessary software on demand. Cloud vendors offer online marketplaces in which enterprises can tap into services that they may or may not have the time or inclination to build. Why reinvent the wheel by having your staff spend time building service components, when you can quickly subscribe to a component, that’s been tested and uptime certified, and pay for it on as-used basis?
Just as businesses are evolving into orchestrator roles, so are the systems that support them. As Sawhney so aptly put it, in the near future, “the concept of an application will be obsolete. They will all be services, combined, mixed, matched and reused as needed.”
Cloud computing is pushing some software vendors to change their models to component delivery, perhaps based on a micropayment business model, at pennies per transaction. This makes plenty of room not only for small start-ups, but also for development shops within traditional enterprises that have great ideas. We’ll see the emergence of the corporation-as-a-service-orchestrator phenomena.
