Three factors are reshaping the demand profile for application services, changing the services in fundamental ways. The first factor is best exemplified by digital technologies. Basically these are new technologies that create new business opportunities in enterprises. Inside of this would be cloud, mobility, social, big data and the IoT. They are made possible because of the innovations and disruptive technologies that are coming into the marketplace. There is an important aspect to these opportunities, which significantly impacts the services industry.
We can refer to this first factor of demand for application services as “greenfield” opportunities. In this space, is there is no provider incumbency and there no ecosystem is in place. Because these demand areas (cloud, mobility, big data, social and IoT) are new and never been done before, they are closely linked to a client’s business agenda driving growth. These greenfield app services are often funded and driven by the business and new money, and the sponsors are very senior-level executives within the organization.
Business units are highly involved in these app initiatives because they hold potential for market share gains or competitiveness shifts. And they’re new and exciting. It’s always more fun to work on initiatives for growth, and it’s much easier to spend greenfield money than it is to take money away from the brownfield existing ecosystem.
This source of app demand services is really exciting for CIOs and service providers because it’s using technology for what they want technology to do. In my next blog posts, I’ll discuss the other two factors in the profile demand for application services.