Services providers are increasingly focusing their solution design and go-to-market strategies on vertical opportunities. The Cloud will provide the platform for service providers of all shapes and sizes to launch new vertical applications, services, and business process utilities. The emergence of new vertical offerings will originate from an array of providers with different heritages. These will include traditional IT and business services providers that leverage a new (more efficient) delivery platform, SaaS providers that can rapidly “verticalize” offerings based on a continuous dialogue with customers and non-traditional services providers that have unique vertical IP.
In this Strategic Perspective, we tackle whether providers can and should drive differentiation through verticalization and illustrate how the cloud provides the platform to achieve new levels of service innovation.
