Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
6.2.2 The Flows
The exchange flows among the market players are multiple with variable contents.
However, in practical terms the flows in Grid technology based solutions are quite
similar to those in any other business and can be divided into three groups:
• the flows of intangible benefits (e.g. technical, market and strategic knowledge,
branding, loyalty and confidence)
• the flows of tangible goods (e.g. software, hardware, licences)
• the financial flows
2
(e.g. revenues and payments).
The
intangible exchanges
are mostly informal, and they often have an immeasurable
value in forms of tacit knowledge, confidentiality, and reputation. For example a
SaaS provider who cooperates with a Grid resource and infrastructure provider with
a high prestige super computing centre, can use that reputation as a marketing tool
to point out and stress the reliability of his service.
The
flows of tangible goods
are mainly related to software and licences. The
licenses and the content of the flows depend on the Grid solution in question. For
example when considering commercial software running in an end user's premises
(an internal Grid deployment) the following questions become essential: how many
and what kind of licenses (e.g. node locked, floating, usage based) are needed, and
what kind of payment options are available. If the end user uses an in-house appli-
cation the license flows (and possible payments) are internal among the different
departments of the end user organization. In the external Grid deployment the situ-
ation is different, and the service provider has to acquire the licenses from the ISVs
(Individual Software Vendor), or have a special agreement with the ISV for the use
of Grid-enabled application (Stanoevska-Slabeva et al. 2008).
The
financial flows
represent how the costs and revenues are shared between
the different market actors, and they help to understand how the final price paid
by the end user is formed. As presented in the value network picture, the payments
are most commonly related to the use of computing resources, network connection,
software licenses, and different kinds of value adding and consultancy services.
Using the Grid value network (fig. 6.3) as an example, we can see that the only
market player who receives a payment from the end user is a solution provider.
This means that the price the end user pays the service provider covers multiple
payments which are distributed to the different market players via normal supplier
payments.
Observing the financial flows from the end user's perspective we can distinguish
following payments and cost types:
•
One-time investment:
in hardware, software, installation and integration costs
necessary to integrate the new solution in the existing infrastructure of the user.
Depending on the level of integration of the solution, this amount may be paid
to the one player providing the whole service (for example the solution provider)
2
Financial flows are usually considered as tangible goods. However, we separate them for clarity
in order to differentiate between different types of flows/exchanges.
