Access & Disintermediation
We are constantly monitoring directions and trends in information management in an effort to keep our clients informed and to help them shape their current and future services and projects. One of the obvious directions I see on the info management front is the convergence of tools and technologies all pointing to a similar goal: Removing Barriers.
The removal of barriers as an information management trend, takes two distinct forms: 1. The access granted to users via Web APIs. 2. The tendency toward disintermediation in the traditional sense.Opening up software services via Web APIs gives users a chance to leverage their own knowledge and know-how to enhance services they use every day. It is a new model for creating win-win situations between services and subscribers and creates an open invitation to innovation. This option dovetails with trends toward new kinds of value-adding, most notably the ability to capture the expertise, inventiveness and creativity of users in a way that is directly reflected in the service’s interface and that directly extends the capability of the service. [SEE the entry on Network Effects.] It goes without saying, that this new model brings with it serious challenges in the areas of security and privacy, but all changes require development of equally new control mechanisms and should not be a reason to reject the migration to new ways of doing things.
While Web APIs offer new access points and new ways to innovate existing software services, there will be equivalent shifts to parties who have acted as traditional information brokers or intermediaries. Intermediary services are an integral part of Web Services, but more traditional forms of broking and intermediation should see significant changes. Profit points will change as the value-added shifts up, down and sideways in the evolving value chains related to Web Services and new models of software engineering. The nature and presentation of intermediate services are also likely to change. Users and other software services will increasing have direct access to online goods, services, tools, expertise, etc. Service requestors will expect to be able to access intermediate services without interrupting their transactions to deal separately with other agents. Intermediary services will becomes part of enriched processing, machine-based, and largely invisible to the human consumer. It will be essential that brokers are correctly positioned in a systems sense to add significant value where it has most impact and best compliments users’ info eco system.
The patterns and precise models for how these trends will emerge in specific vertical markets are not set, but it’s clear that architectures will come to reflect this philosophy of constantly incorporating user-designed innovation and bringing users in direct contact with all required services, sans barriers.
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