TECHNOLOGY
necessarily have the desire to be the biggest , most powerful global cloud or tech provider in the world , but they do want to dominate their particular niche . Working with them enables their ability to compete and benefits us as we have new solutions first , which we can readily integrate with our existing suite . Most importantly this benefits the customer as they can get a complete solution made up of standardised best-in-class products for 90 % of what they need , but we can also bring these innovative partners to provide the 10 % which provides the differentiation . That ’ s true not just of startups , but of the ecosystem we work in and in my space , logistics . We have partners who do everything from Integration as a Service ( IaaS ) to connectivity and IoT to the linking of multiple services provided by logistics companies . The value lies in the ecosystem and its ability to solve problems .”
Regan highlights the move from IT being bought and deployed locally , where it ’ s used as a product , to an era where people are effectively buying a service , SaaS ( software as a service ) and PaaS ( product as a service ) etc . “ That reflects the pendulum shift in
importance from IT to operations which is becoming more flexible ,” he adds . “ But customers aren ’ t necessarily interested in the technology behind the solution – they simply want to be able to use it , scale it , deploy it quickly and grow it . I see that from a software perspective and more and more from a hardware , manufacturing perspective and 3D printing will play a big part in that . From a manufacturer ’ s perspective they ’ re asking , ‘ why can ’ t I charge per unit ?’”
58 May 2018