Business Model Innovation

One thing the IT industry doesn't get enough credit for is the innovations it makes in its own business models and delivery. The IT industry is shockingly young compared to oil, transportation and other conglomerations, yet it may have gone through more variations than all the others combined. If the introduction of the personal computer into the business and consumer mainstream in the early 1980s marks the birth of the modern IT industry, for a 30-year-old, it's worn a lot of hats.

The early '80s was a period of disconnection. Personal computers were stand-alone devices that through software and an operating system took over tasks previously done on pad and paper. Break-fix technicians were called on to repair defective units and keep them tuned up in much the same way the typewriter repairman had done in the past.

Enter rudimentary network operating systems and devices began to be connected to each other and to locally stored resources and data stores. The business model was selling, installing and maintaining systems and hardware, working in discrete environments and still for a limited number of tasks.

Enter the '90s and we begin to see a firmly established server and peripheral market begin to grow, but those were just more pieces of equipment to install and maintain. Jump ahead the the mid-1990s and the Internet exploded on the scene and made it possible for information to be share across discrete disconnected LANs.

The business model now was expanding rapidly to include Internet connectivity, security and servers, not just working for internal clients but serving the requests of people hitting a website. The business vocabulary included terms like redundancy, load balancing, T1, firewall and DMZ. Companies began to specialize in certain aspects of IT creating distinct practices creating a diversity of models to apply.

As we came out of the boom years of the 1990s and with the Y2K scare behind us, the model morphed again. High-speed bandwidth brought about remote monitoring and storage to the traditional markets but now software and applications were playing an even bigger role. Application service providers, the precursor to software as a service, demonstrated a new way to deploy great applications and took advantage of the advances in Web programming capabilities and standards. All of which demonstrated the full-fledged power of the Internet as an application host. During the same time WiFi, notebooks and smartphones extended the network and the business model.

Fast forward to today and we have a robust business model built around a huge range of managed services that extend and learn from the past while taking opportunities for business and customer productivity to another level. And yet even more platforms will emerge in the cloud, in handsets and tablets or via streamlined embedded operating systems powered by processors of all sorts.

No doubt the IT industry has done a great job creating the next great thing, but it also should get credit for finding innovative ways to bring the next great thing to market in ways that create new opportunities and create value for customers.