Guest Blog by Phil Shih, Structure Research
At the OX Summit one of the notable themes was the need for hosted services to be trustworthy, flexible and open. The argument goes something like this: an ecosystem featuring players like Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google have closed down the open ecosystem and narrowed the market for the smaller players (ie. hosters). Europeans have further been scared by the NSA revelations and make cloud services even more a matter of trust. Given this context, hosters should provide choice, trust and transparency over data location and privacy. The idea is to fight in areas that many of the larger Internet players might not be playing in or may not be doing a good job.
Four commandments for trusted cloud services
In order to achieve this goal OX encourages hosters, ISVs and telcos to develop their solutions with four commandments in mind. First, the service must be available from several providers across national borders. Sounds weird? Freedom of choice and freedom to switch the providers at any time give customers a much bigger feeling of trust for the service, and competition is healthy for a thriving market.
Secondly, sufficient migration tools (like the email moving service from audriga partnering with OX) are essential for a stable cloud ecosystem and every service must allow its data to be moved on request. In contrast to the rising amount of software being consumed from the cloud, OX mentioned the ability to run any service in its own environment as number three. Even if the customer does not trust the open cloud solution and prefers the in-house integration through the provider, this should be his choice.
Finally, and not surprisingly for an open source company, OX encouraged every vendor to disclose the source code of its software to the community. Open source software is classified as trustworthy, is naturally more secure and might become even more popular which will only fall back to the developers.
Does this make sense? Is trust a selling point?
For hosters and service providers looking to fight off the likes of Google and Microsoft it is definitely a strategy that makes sense. Service providers are not gigantic monoliths and have more interaction with customers, which translates into better relationships. A natural byproduct of this kind of service provider-customer relationship is familiarity and trust. Hosters would be wise to play this angle up. One area where hosters can really separate is to be very transparent. This is part and parcel of creating that feeling of trust but is not emphasized by many providers – big or small.
Especially in Europe this can be a big selling point if done right. The flexibility part is also crucial. If a provider is happy to build a pathway to leave it is not locking customers in but demonstrating confidence in its ability to serve the customer. This reinforces the service provider’s value proposition, which at the end of the day is what differentiates hosters. Trust is closely intertwined with that and hosters should not be afraid to double down on this.
The market is big but the massive-scale platforms will gain more footprint and hosters will have to be more attuned to these slightly more narrow “battle areas”.