So what is the future of services?
It is a no brainer that if possible, both consumers and enterprises would eventually be happy to consume IT as a service, and not as a mix of products which they have to buy and get it all integrated…
It is a big “if” though…..it is anybody’s guess as to the time it will take for IT vendors and technologies to consolidate and morph in a manner that will make it possible for IT to be consumed as a service by users…
Some are betting that it will happen sooner than later…that IT will very soon be a utility and enterprises and consumers will consume it on tap…and many others including the big giants are sure, are hoping that technology is too complex for that kind of model to become a reality anytime in distant future….
In the domain of “IT as a utility” model, there are again different options….
you could have the dominant “I do it all” model being proposed by Oracle where you go to Oracle for the entire stack including hardware/dabase/applications/analytics….it is simple…it is nice but it is a lock in….
or… you could have the current plethora of choices offered by IaaS/PaaS/SaaS vendors where you have choice but the enterprise IT has to figure out how it integrates with the internal islands…and manage multiple XaaS providers….
Services companies need to place bets now….on the futures possible and the options they have given the future they think is the most probable.
There is a big opportunity in all the integration challenges but they also face a big risk in the loss of the managed services business as enterprises move towards public cloud…
Services companies will need to be careful about the future they bet upon, and the options they choose….for the stakes are high….
And of course you have the easier “Ostrich” option of doing nothing and assuming that the world will not change…rather demanding that it not change….and there are enough players who will choose that option as well…..