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T
he long-term, margin-oriented economy
is coming to an end. Instead, it is being
replaced by flat-fee, shared, crowd-
based or on-demand service models that give
customers more agility, greater options and,
ultimately, better value for money. We are all
having to adapt to this new normal, and be-
come more flexible and agile than ever to react
quickly to constantly evolving requirements.
Players like Spotify, Netflix, car2go, AirBnB,
Amazon and Microsoft have already changed
the media, music, transportation and IT indus-
tries irrevocably. What all these companies have
in common is that they have embraced a new
selling model: they all now offer their products
on demand, as a service and bill their custom-
ers either only for what they use or they simply
charge them an incredibly low-cost flat fee. They
make profit by winning the long tail, reaching
the tipping point and spending money only on
resources while they use them.
Scalability and agility can only be achieved if
the tools and services businesses are using can
also adapt flexibly to their needs as well as those
of their customers. And this is where cloud com-
puting comes in. Cloud is just the first small step
in this huge digital transformation that started
a few years ago and is now developing rapidly.
Businesses of all sizes and types are adopting the
as-a-service paradigm, and soon we will all be
embracing it, because it fits better with the way
our society is heading and the way in which we
expect to use and pay for products and services.
The world as we know it is morphing into an
‘everything-as-a-service’ economy. Cloud-based
applications and infrastructures are becoming
the basic ingredients for creating the global, flex-
ible and scalable platforms that businesses world-
wide will come to rely on for everything they do.
We will use it to feed privately produced re-
newable energy into the grids, to orchestrate
distributed manufacturing using 3D printing,
to analyse massive amounts of data procured
from billions of sensors, and to support the
sharing and collaborative economy we are
heading towards. Software will become the life-
blood of everything we do.
I am deeply convinced that in just a few years,
every company and every individual will rely
on cloud-based services in the same way that
we have come to rely on electricity and the
internet today. Cloud computing will become
omnipresent to the point that we won’t even
notice it’s there.
Damianos Soumelidis is managing director at soft-
ware development and consulting firm Nagarro
The cloud
will disappear
Cloud computing is the backbone for on-demand service models, which
give customers more agility, flexibility and better value for money
DAM I ANOS SOUME L I D I S :
NAGAR RO
V I EWPO I NT
“Cloud is just the first small
step in this huge digital
transformation that started a
few years ago”