Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
As can be seen from table 5.1, six distinct business cases are commonly found today.
As illustrated in the second column, it is important not only to identify the benefits
from the provider's side, but from the user's perspective as well. For example, in the
third case we have a company (e.g. a SME) that Grid-enables an existing application
or develops an application optimised to run over the Grid and offers it to external
clients. From the perspective of the company, there are two Grid benefits: The first
one is about the exploitation of common resources, category 1 as discussed in the
previous section. For example, in the case that the new application offered by the
company can be provided more efficiently over a Grid infrastructure i.e. it can be
offered to a larger number of customers/users without compromising or needing
to upgrade the existing internal infrastructure. Furthermore, in the case of a new
service, this can be offered utilising the SaaS paradigm, thus opening a window of
opportunity to additional economic capabilities for the company which is a cate-
gory 3 enabler according to our classification.
To add to that, the user can now enjoy new web-based services (e.g. through
SaaS) not possible before, that eventually might be exploited for his own purposes;
for example, in the case the user that purchases the service is another company
or institution he may be able to optimise his own service provisioning in his own
market. In this example, as in others, there are more than one associated enablers
involved according the very exact model chosen. For the purposes of presenting the
whole picture we have grouped them together under each case.
In order to establish the associated business models in each case, it is impor-
tant to identify the actors constituting the basic value chain of the offering. This is
exactly why the third column has been included in this table. However we are not
going into detail in these value chains and networks here as this is the subject of the
next chapter of this topic. Nevertheless we need this in order to analyse the products
and outcomes of each actor in the subsequent cases in the next chapter.
5.5 Offerings and Business Models for the Involved Actors in the
Business Cases
In a typical value chain, such as the ones established in the aforementioned exam-
ples, each actor contributes in a tangible (e.g., with an intermediate or supplemen-
tary product) or in an intangible way (e.g., technology expertise essential for a Grid
installation) to the resulting end-product. Based on each contribution there is a
linked business model established for this actor in order to earn economic benefits.
For example, in the case of a technology integrator that sets up a Grid infrastruc-
ture, the resulting earnings come from offering IT services, that are one of the core
competences and services portfolio of that particular company, to its customers.
These are presented by case in the “Associated Products or Services” column of
table 5.2.
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