Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2018. Read them in this 10th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Contributed by Tom Dibble, President and CEO, Aria Systems
Agility and Complex Billing Will Drive Success
As 2017 fades in the rearview mirror and 2018 drives toward us in its autonomous vehicle, we believe businesses will begin to gauge their success by how agile they can be — and if they can handle the complex billing requirements that modern enterprises demand. Here are two trends businesses should pay close attention to in the coming year:
1. In September 2017, Amazon announced a move from per-hour to per-second pricing for their popular AWS cloud computing services so customers could, in their words, “pay only for what you use, and … start or stop using a product at any time.” With $12 billion in annual revenue and 30.3% of the cloud infrastructure market utilizing AWS services, Amazon’s actions always draw attention, and Google quickly moved to per-second pricing as well. Depending on whether Amazon makes up for lost revenue in volume (a key play of theirs) or not – we see this micro consumption-based pricing expanding to other categories.
2. Delivering on a micro-pricing strategy is just one of the ways that companies can keep customers happier longer. Companies will also be called upon to support “multi-dimensional customer choice” – the customization of services and billing based on customer needs. Agile billing will aid multi-dimensional customer choice by quickly enabling the delivery of complex pricing, packages, and plans that better meet customer needs. While adapting to the complexity of delivering multitudes of products and services (often in different regions and regulatory requirements) will be demanding, market pressures will require that companies rise to the challenge. Customers will call for instantaneous turnaround and simple communications. In 2018, systems will need to reflect the kind of sophistication we have grown used to from a family phone plan – where different members of the family can choose different devices and services. In the end, this increased agility may do more than just serve customers – it may be the way companies avoid obsolescence.
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About the Author
Tom Dibble is President & CEO of Aria Systems, the top ranked cloud-based monetization platform. Enterprise companies depend on Aria to accelerate time to market and increase flexibility, enabling them to maximize customer value, monetize IoT, and grow recurring revenue through subscription and usage-based offerings.
