Making Business Smart: How to Position for Business as a Service

Abstract

A profound change will take place in the way of satisfying the information and communications technology needs of future business customers. This future customer is no longer a single company but rather a node in a web of networks—continually changing the links that it maintains and the positions it will take. Decision makers should see their company as a node on much larger and extensive networks of interdependent firms that are constantly being reconfigured. The number of nodes an actor can “see” across not only their customers and suppliers but also the contacts’ contacts is called the network horizon. Especially CIOs must span the boundaries between own organizations and the growing networks in which their organizations operate; decision-making in very large networks is fundamentally different. To provide winning ICT services to such new customer requirements will prove to be a formidable challenge for today’s ICT operators. This chapter presents a solid analytical framework as a basis for strategic positioning options of future “business as a service” providers.