An Unprecedented Opportunity for Ecosystem Partners

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Everywhere we look, the technology industry is undergoing a digital paradigm shift that impacts businesses of every sort.  With this profound transformation comes an unprecedented opportunity to deliver solutions offering greater value to customers. 

From vendors and distributors on to resellers, ecosystem partners are busy refining their services and offerings to maximize ROI, optimize speed-to-value and to explore new revenue streams in this changing digital world. They are developing new competencies and shifting their focus from licensed product transactions to a service deployment model leveraging the cloud. Moreover, they’re transitioning from the sale of one-time purchasable licenses to a subscription model for services.  

For their part, customers are at work carefully assessing their own digital maturity. Seeking to keep stride with the rapidly digitizing world, they’re evaluating their existing systems and workloads, aiming to ensure that they are utilizing customized offerings of the latest technologies and varied deployment models to meet their unique business needs. 

Prioritizing Customer-Centric XaaS 

Increased demand from customers for customized offerings means that any ecosystem partner has the potential to thrive in the service economy, where nearly everything can be delivered to customers as a service. End customers are increasingly receptive to unique service offerings, flexible billing models and new ways of using and accessing products – all of which provides a unique value opportunity distinct to the service/subscription economy. 

This translates into innovative and dynamic opportunities for technology vendors who maximize their everything as a service (XaaS) and subscription-based products and service offerings. While technology has created the opportunity in the XaaS economy, it is paramount that vendors look beyond technology and focus on the customer. When any product can be found as a service, customer satisfaction and outcomes become essential to securing customer loyalty and, ultimately, are key market differentiators. 

Introducing ‘Outcomes as a Service’ 

The outcomes-as-a-service model takes traditional technology service models one step further by delivering actionable business outcomes. Rather than providing dashboards and data like software as a service would, the outcome as a service model provides predictive and prescriptive outcomes for customers to react to a changing landscape in real time.  

According to Forrester, marketplace development platforms are moving towards outcomes-as-a-service offerings that combine a bill of materials with human services, remote monitoring, and digital services. OEMs, meanwhile, are finding innovative ways to integrate IoT, AI, and digital twin technologies into their products to provide customers with increased value.  Equipping products with IoT sensors, and utilizing digital twin and AI technologies, their as-a-service offerings can track and optimize the performance of these smart products throughout their lifetime, providing quantifiable outcomes. 

Customer outcomes are even more impactful when these smart, connected products are transformed from discrete products to product systems. These product systems can “plug into” a system of systems coordinated and optimized for an entire environment, such as a smart building, a smart home or a smart city.  

System of Systems

OEMs whose products and designs have the greatest impact on total system performance will be in the best position to drive this transformation and capture disproportionate value. 

Creating Composable Systems from Services 

The ability of a business to react quickly to unforeseen events (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic) is based largely on the “composable” nature of that business. According to analyst firm Gartner, “composable business” means creating an organization made from interchangeable building blocks. This modular setup enables a business to rearrange and reorient as needed depending on external or internal factors, including a shift in customer values or a sudden change in the supply chain. 

Becoming a “composable business” involves decomposing traditional monolithic business systems (e.g., CRM, ERP, HR, commerce) into decoupled, packaged business capabilities (PBCs). These PBCs can then be uniquely re-composed into a system of systems serving a more focused business purpose with complex business requirements.   

Each PBC is a self-contained system that can be deployed independently. A PBC has the benefits of a “microservices” approach, but with the appropriate granularity for an XaaS offering. Open technology can enable interoperability between PBC services for seamless integration (and removal) of constituent systems, while digital marketplaces can align XaaS selection criteria towards PBCs. 

Below is an illustration of a composable commerce system of systems, where each constituent system is a packaged business capability delivered on a service model.   

Composable Commerce

Orchestrating the Digital Ecosystem  

The pace of change in technology, particularly with the advent of digitally enabled smart systems and IoT technologies, is too great for any single company to provide end-to-end solutions. Therefore, a composable system from multi-vendor XaaS offerings requires a digital ecosystem of trading partners. 

A digital ecosystem itself can be represented by a complex, multi-level system of systems. Each ecosystem partner’s composed commerce system-of-system can be further composed into a system-of-systems helping form the ecosystem that enables information exchanges between trading partners. 

The ecosystem orchestrator defines the blueprint for interoperability, including a common information model and open APIs.  This blueprint is the foundation for orchestrating end-to-end solution delivery through the digital ecosystem. 

Ecosystem orchestration allows partners on a common business platform to easily and dynamically exchange, combine and monetize their services. They’re also able to introduce new digital offerings at speed, sell joint offerings and create new business models. Ecosystem orchestration ensures automated orchestration and provisioning of all services across the ecosystem.  

Partners can define revenue sharing and flexible partner settlement agreements for selling their services through ecosystem partners and managing relationships with business partners. Ecosystem orchestration and management additionally enables consolidated partner settlement billing and invoicing, independent of end customer invoicing and settlement.  

Looking to CloudBlue 

Considering the complexities of ecosystem orchestration and their impact on time to market, organizations must inevitably confront the question of how best to effectively and efficiently enable the digital ecosystem. For this, large enterprises have consistently turned to CloudBlue. Drawing on time-tested best practices, CloudBlue has invested over 15 years building features and capabilities that enable and orchestrate ecosystems.  

The CloudBlue solution stack and its granular architecture enable ecosystem orchestration for all entities constituting a digital ecosystem. By offering granular services such as vendor, catalog and subscription management, plus billing, invoicing and multi-channel, multi-tier capabilities, CloudBlue streamlines and automates end-to-end digital supply chain management in a digital ecosystem. 

Recognized by Forrester as a leader in digital marketplace development platforms, CloudBlue contributes thought leadership on ecosystem orchestration to industry consortia including the Digital Twin Consortium. 

Digital Twin Consortium
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Mike Jennett, Director of CloudBlue Platform Strategy, is an accomplished business and technology executive. With a deep focus on product development and go-to-market strategy, he plays a pivotal role driving strategic growth and market expansion. Mike’s career is characterized by his adeptness in driving technological advancements and his commitment to leading digital transformations with experience including IDC where he was VP of the Mobility and Digital Transformation IEP practices, and HP where he held numerous leadership roles. Mike’s expertise is also reflected in his published works and contributions to multiple tech publications. Mike holds a B.A. from California Polytechnic University.
Having previously to strategic product management, agile transformations, and user experience in CloudBlue, Taylor Giddens heads the Services & Solutions team where he ensures smooth delivery, operations and solution growth for our partners and customers.

The team includes technical account management, managed services, support, custom solution development, and customer enablement.

Prior to CloudBlue, his resume boasts leadership of some of the world’s largest companies during their digital transformations and marketplace launches. Taylor is a practitioner of servitude leadership when it comes to enabling his team to drive positive outcomes on the road to operational excellence.
Laurens van Alphen, a visionary entrepreneur with over 29 years of internet technology expertise, serves as Director of Technical Managed Services at CloudBlue, responsible for Operations and Delivery of CloudBlue SaaS.

As a Dutch racing champion and car enthusiast, he brings the same drive to the tech realm, steering Keenondots from a managed hosting firm to a global cloud enablement leader. Laurens is celebrated for his outcome-driven leadership, deep industry insight, and passion for balancing business innovation with client engagement.
Lincoln Lincoln is CloudBlue’s Head of Global Sales; having been with the company since November 2017. Leading CloudBlue’s global go-to-market organization, he’s responsible for driving accelerated and sustained mutual growth with CloudBlue’s customers and partners, as well as forming new customer partnerships across the Vendor and Provider ecosystem. As part of CloudBlue’s leadership team he is responsible the organisation’s revenue and continued market leadership by delivering and supporting products, services and solutions to organizations in established and new markets around the world.

Before joining CloudBlue, Lincoln was AppDirect’s Regional Director, Asia Pacific & Japan, responsible for forming, building and leading AppDirect’s business and operations across the APJ geography. He built and led AppDirect’s fastest growing and highest performing region globally within 3yrs.

Before joining AppDirect, Lincoln was EMC’s Practice Manager, Cloud Service Providers, APJ, working with the leading Service Providers to maximise their Cloud Business presence & market success. Lincoln joined EMC in 2007, and has over 20 years’ experience in the IT industry, having been based out of Singapore, Australia and the UK. Prior to EMC, he was in range of sales and channel positions at Symantec and VERITAS.

Lincoln has an Honours degree in Business Administration from Kingston University in the United Kingdom.
Brent Clooney is the Executive Director and Associate General Counsel for Ingram Micro Inc., and lead counsel for CloudBlue.

Brent is a Canadian based corporate lawyer with more than 20 years of experience as a strategic legal advisor both in private practice and as in-house counsel to large multi-national companies. Prior to joining Ingram Micro in 2008, he worked at a well-respected corporate law firm in Toronto, Canada and later served as general counsel for Toshiba Canada. During his 15-year tenure at Ingram Micro, he has held positions of increasing complexity and responsibility, and since being promoted to his current role in 2022, Brent is the legal lead for both Ingram Micro’s Canadian and global cloud businesses, as well as CloudBlue.

Brent holds a law degree (LL.B.) from Queen’s University, a Psychology degree (B.A. Honours) from Lakehead University, and has been admitted to the bar in Ontario, Canada since 2002.
Anurag serves as the Head of Product Management for CloudBlue and is responsible for product direction and driving innovation. His leadership has been marked by a keen focus on customer needs, growing the ISV ecosystem, and ensuring the continual evolution of CloudBlue’s product portfolio.

Anurag joined Ingram Micro in 2017 and has been instrumental in, positioning CloudBlue as an industry leading monetization platform for MSP’s, Telco’s and Distributors. Previously Anurag worked at Oracle and Microsoft where he managed many technology projects and programs.
As VP of Engineering of CloudBlue, Rony oversees the development and engineering efforts of the company. He is a recognized leader with more than 25 years of experience in Technology and Product.

Prior to joining CloudBlue Rony lead the R&D efforts at Tripwire acquired by Thoma Bravo, and Cedexis acquired by Citrix. Rony is a leader with extensive experience in transforming both complex technology problems into products that customers love and disjointed organizations into agile high performing teams.
Coen is a distinguished leader and entrepreneur in the realm of cloud technology. Currently serving as CEO of Keenondots and the Global Director of CloudBlue SaaS. He is passionate about driving innovation, fostering collaboration, and leading high-performing teams to achieve transformative results.

With a background as Managing Director of INTO Cloud and a pivotal role as Director of Products of KPN, he brings a wealth of experience in steering organizations through the complexities of the digital landscape.

Beyond the boardroom, Coen is a marathon enthusiast, demonstrating endurance and discipline in pursuit of both professional and personal goals.
Alyson has over twenty years of experience in demand generation, marketing automation and data management. She is responsible for leading the strategy and direction of the company’s brand, performance, and digital marketing.

Prior to CloudBlue, Alyson served as Ingram Micro’s Director of Global Business Intelligence Marketing Automation driving channel partner campaigns. Her tenure in marketing leadership at prestigious companies such as Western Digital, Ocean Institute celebrates redefining marketing campaigns and building top performing teams based on trust, experimentation, and results.

Alyson resides with her husband and three children in Orange County and is an active volunteer and donor within her children’s sports and education programs.

Darek Tasak is leading Customer Success & Value Creation for CloudBlue. In his role, he looks after CloudBlue customers globally during the entire lifecycle of our relationship: from the initial on-boarding, through in-life account management, always ensuring they build successful businesses leveraging our technology. Additionally, he is also in charge of Partnership & Alliances, as well as Pricing Management for everything we commercialize.


Before CloudBlue, Darek managed Ingram Micro’s Services division for hi-tech customers in Europe & APAC. His prior experiences include also launching and leading pan-European services business for TDSynnex, as well as strategy consulting with Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

As President of CloudBlue, Uddhav is a distinguished leader and visionary with nearly two decades of platform-building experience. He is an industry leader in digital commerce, the subscription economy, and monetization platforms.


Notably, at SAP, he spearheaded the transformation of their platform business into a multi-cloud platform-as-a-service, offering enterprise and developer-friendly subscription models. At Pure Storage, he championed the efforts to successfully disrupt the storage industry by creating revolutionary Storage-as-a-service, AIOps-as-a-service, and Disaster Recovery-as-a-service offerings with cutting-edge features and establishing a sophisticated subscription commerce infrastructure that is channel-friendly.


At CloudBlue, Uddhav guides and empowers businesses to rethink their monetization strategies by unlocking the power of digital ecosystems and marketplaces. CloudBlue provides enterprises with a mature multi-tier, multi-channel marketplace and monetization platform that enables usage-based subscription models and global delivery of Anything-as-a-Service solutions. Uddhav has played a pivotal role in shaping the future of the subscription economy through his innovative thinking and impactful contributions.

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