Is the platform important or services?

I hope you are enjoying this discussion on disaggregation with the twist I am putting on top of it. You may also say that may this is not the disaggregation that I had in my mind. I wish that you can stay with me through this story and I will help view the disaggregation in all its dimensions and how did it come about to the current form and shape and what you can expect in the future.

Let us explore today another dimension. In marketing, we talk about 4 Ps, product, price, place and promotion. I believe Kotler did add a 5th P (Purpose) sometime later, but much later than when I did my MBA.

Let us think about just two Ps, Product and Place, let us assume all is else is the same. What do you think is more important? Well, please do not take the easy path, and say “both”!

Do you like a shopping mall just because of its location? or because of what you can get there? Great food, entertainment, shopping or experience? I believe if you look at it this way, you would quickly conclude that great locations with poor products fail. Location matters, but if the Mall is big enough and has a potential to help me get all the “experience” I need, the location may not be a big problem.

Now let us build on what we talked about last week, Hotmail started it, disaggregation of the user from the Network operator, they achieved this by creating a service that is network provider agnostic. In fact, they were the ones who made “service operator” just a “network operator”.

What if the location of the services is the Internet? now is the network relevant? I believe any network will do, service is not delinked from the platform (network), any network will do, scaling the service did not require scaling the network. The network became a commodity. It took the operators a long time to realize they are no longer “service operators”. They are just network operators, the location of the services has moved, and that only service they provide is connectivity and that they have no differentiation.

Next week we will explore the scalability of these services and how that lead to further disaggregation.

So stay tuned.