Disruptor or Disrupted? Accelerating Your Business Innovation

While software may be “eating the world” as Marc Andreessen famously put it, what’s ultimately resulted is an application economy, an environment defined by disruption and innovation. In every industry, it is application innovators that are doing the eating, feasting on the market share previously held by market incumbents.

Emerging players and large tech firms are bringing disruption to every industry, leaving established organizations with a choice: Embark on a digital business transformation and become a market disruptor, or wait to become a victim of disruption. 

Service providers also face a similar choice. They can play a role in their customers’ digital business transformation, and position themselves for increasing market share and margins. Or they can stick with the status quo and start losing mindshare and market share to the vendors that do offer digital business transformation services.

Faced with these emerging realities, many service provider leaders fall into one of two camps today. Either they have a vision for innovation and the role they’ll play in the digital economy, or they’re clear on the need to move in this direction, but not exactly how to start.

For executives in either camp, it’s important to recognize that to deliver value in the digital economy, their organizations will need to go through their own digital transformations, and a big part of this will entail change at the operational level. Quite simply, the promise of an innovative business model that fuels customers’ digital business transformation will only be fully realized through a strong operational foundation.

Service Provider Tools: Helping or Hurting Your Cause?

The tools service providers have in place play a critical role in whether success is achieved in the application economy, and, if so, the degree to which it is realized. Will the margins be sustainable? Will the offering scale? Will it deliver compelling customer value? Will it be markedly better than competitive offerings? The tools in place can play a make-or-break role in all these respects.

Today, the reality is that many of the products implemented in service provider organizations are stifling rather than fueling business model innovation—but it doesn’t have to be that way. There are tools that successful service providers point to as being key enablers of innovation. Moving forward, this capability to enable innovation needs to be a key part of the due diligence associated with any new tool decision.

CA Unified Infrastructure Management: An Ally for Innovators

Many service providers have selected CA Unified Infrastructure Management (CA UIM) because it’s an asset, one that that fuels innovative operations, services and business models. If I’d ever doubted that CA UIM could support a wealth of unique business models, those doubts would have quickly been dispelled as I started working on a new paper, “CA Unified Infrastructure Management: Profiles in Partner Success, Europe edition.”

In this paper, we profile three successful service provider partners based in EMEA. As we conducted interviews of partner executives, we soon found each business has established a strong track record of success—but each had done it in a completely different way.

Up Close: Three Successful Service Provider Business Models

Following is an overview of the unique business models and approaches of each of the partners featured in the paper:

The executives at each of these businesses cite CA UIM as a key enabler of these innovative approaches. For example, the solution’s extensibility and coverage were key factors in supporting CSS’ highly optimized ITSM offerings. CA UIM is a key enabler of BPSolutions’ cloud and managed services, which are key areas of business growth. AXSOS relies on the solution’s automation and operational efficiency to focus on delivering innovations and client value, rather than keeping the lights on.

Service Provider Business Models: Conclusion

If there are innovative business initiatives you want to pursue, maybe it’s time to start leveraging CA UIM. CA UIM offers the strong capabilities and adaptability that helped fuel the innovative business models outlined above—and it can support your vision, as well. To find out more about our three partners, why they chose CA UIM and why they’re glad they did, be sure to check out the full paper: “CA Unified Infrastructure Management: Profiles in Partner Success, Europe edition.”

In addition, be sure to review our earlier service provider Profiles in Partner Success paper, which features five service providers from the United States and Latin America.

Guest blogs such as this one are published monthly and are part of MSPmentor’s annual platinum sponsorship.