From B2C and B2B… to B2i?
The landscape of IT purchasing has changed massively since the cloud appeared. "The rise of the cloud, the proliferation of mobile and improved access to information empowered business buyers in new ways," says Ed Chuang, VP of Marketing for Avangate. "These shifts go beyond consumerisation of IT and into what we call B2i – business to individual – where the traditional distinction between B2C and B2B is now blurred."
This is the world not only of IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), but of SaaS and PaaS (Platform as a Service), where companies pay as they go for bandwidth, buy software subscriptions, get freemium trials, and pay via credit cards.
"The IT budget is not solely in the hands of the IT team anymore, and individual employees are now empowered to purchase applications with a few clicks of a mouse," says Chuang.
However, it's not necessarily about this new consumerisation of IT per se. "It's more about IT in the digital age being bought as part of a business service, rather than as an end in itself," says Evans.
What is the Third Platform?
The Third Platform is largely more terminology for the same thing as the Nexus of Forces, this time from analysts at IDC. Chuang thinks it's all heading for one place; commerce automation. "With millions of apps, billions of users and trillions of things and continuous industry transformation, digital commerce and, together with it, commerce automation technology will emerge as the fundamental enabler of omni-channel sales within the Third Platform," he says.
Almost all commerce is e-commerce now, but while life gets easier for retailers, it's gotten a lot trickier for distribution and warehouse companies. Cue the automated warehouse, which helps businesses pick orders for individual items without employing hundreds of staff. It's a trend that's soon to go one step further and embrace both personalisation and even faster fulfilment, too.
"The future of the buying experience will be provided through various consumption models – one-time, subscriptions or usage, with 24-hour order processing, instant gratification and personalisation becoming more prevalent," says Chuang.
The fact that Amazon is thinking of using drones to make deliveries is the proof of exactly where it thinks e-commerce is headed, thanks to the Third Platform – and Amazon Prime is but the tip of the iceberg.
What comes after the Nexus of Forces?
Properly digital business – this is about the convergence of people, business and things. The IoT and the concept of blurring the physical and virtual worlds then come into play, according to Gartner, with physical assets becoming digitalised.
It's also when next-gen technologies that are just now being discussed will begin to play a role in business, from augmented reality, brain-computer interfaces, and volumetric and holographic displays, to smart robots, 3D bio-printing and quantum computing. The end result? Autonomous business, where tech replaces humans.
Today, digital business is about mobile apps. Tomorrow there'll be autonomous vehicles shuffling goods and people to and fro, and all kinds of autonomous cognitive software communicating with customers. One thing is for sure; the Nexus of Forces is growing.
"The response needs to be one of cultural shift to embrace the new fast dynamic of the business/technology model, where technology has now become a driver for change, rather than just an enabler," says Evans. "Those companies that recognise and embrace this cultural change will be the ones that succeed in this new environment."
