In this episode, we want to talk about cloud transformation. It seems like you can’t watch an online video without some YouTube Guru talking about the need for transformation. Hopefully, you’ll find a lot more value in this discussion than you do from most YouTube videos.
Welcome to the first 2020 episode of the SubscriptionMaker Podcast. This is your host Zachary Alexander, Enterprise Architect at SubscriptionMaker.net. Please hit the subscribe button where ever you get your podcasts so that you won’t miss any new episodes.
For our purposes, you can think of transformation as a change of attitude. And it’s all about attitude as the gurus will tell. So cloud transformation is about changing the way you think about subscription services.
Why talk about cloud transformation?
A lot of very important people think that the number of workers employed as either freelancers or contingent professionals will increase to 50 percent by 2027 at the latest.
However, an economic shock like a recession could advance this timeline. That means that people with a wide range of backgrounds will need to become subscriptionmakers. So people will need to change their attitudes about full-time employment.
The Great Confluence
We’ve talked a lot about the Great Confluence or the place where market segmentation and the rate of techno-economic change meet. For our discussion, market segmentation has to do with the number of people needed to constitute a viable business opportunity. That’s why you hear so much talk about the riches being in the niches.
Open Source and Artificial Intelligence are driving the rate of techno-economic change in different ways. Open Source has reduced the cost of experimentation. For that matter, so has cloud transformation. And artificial intelligence has reduced the knowledge needed to succeed.
You can find more on this topic in Steve Sammartino’s book called the Great Fragmentation and Thomas L. Friedman’s Thank you for being Late. You find links to both of these books in the show notes for this podcast. For the record, these are affiliate links, which means we could make a few pennies if you choose to click through and purchase one of the books.
Regulatory Changes
Not to put too fine a point on it. The Great Confluence will highly impact the availability of full-time work. It seems like you can’t pick up a newspaper without seeing news about how some state or local government is making it difficult for freelancers and contingent professionals to ply their trade.
The UK and Australia have already reached workforce 50/50. They are already dealing with the societal change caused by a workforce dominated by freelancers and contingent professionals. Hopefully, workers will respond to these regulations by launching more LLCs rather than waiting for an increase in full-time employment.
Enterprise Requirements
Cloud Transformation will benefit large companies as well. Obviously, cloud transformation will impact large companies differently than freelancers and contingent professionals. For example, you can make the case that cloud transformation is really about “elasticity.”
Elasticity is the ability for something to expand and contract without much wasted effort. Generally, this means human coded automation. Sometimes the automation is based on AI or Artificial Intelligence. Either way, more and more large organizations are using it.
So, procurement practices are where we are anticipating the most change when we talk about cloud transformation in large organizations. The reason is that most big companies have a lot of expensive legacy infrastructure.
Did I mention it was paid for with a lot of blood, sweat, and tears? So these large companies are no hurry to ditch these assets for ongoing recurring expenses.
Big cloud transformation takeaway
Subscriptionmakers need to come to grips with the concept of elasticity. Cloud Transformation will mean that you will no longer architect solutions with just static workloads. Your subscription services will expand and contract based on subscriber demand.
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Subscription Maker Podcast. This is your host Zachary Alexander. “Give me some answers” by the New Fools is the music track. You can find it at Epidemic Sound. Finally, you can contact me on SubscriptionMaker.net.