What is XaaS - Anything as a Service?
We may substitute “X” in XaaS with the “C” of Cars or Containers as a Service, “F” for Freight, or “L” for Lawncare. In each case, multiple platforms form the building blocks of an evolving and scalable business model. XaaS platforms extend on the idea of PaaS (Products as a Service) and established ecosystems for SaaS (Software as a Service) to explicitly include the underlying platforms and infrastructure building blocks in an evolving process of value creation, delivery and capture. Motivations for XaaS are multiple:
- Sustainability and circularity impact
- Openness for partnerships, growing scope and share of customer and channels
- Customer experience and solution configurability to evolve with needs and capabilities
- Reliable service networks generating recurring revenues while de-risking CAPEX and lock-ins
The Making of XaaS – Shifting from a Product to a Platform Perspective
This FUTURE LAB builds on insights from “moving to PaaS” to taking a look backstage at the infrastructure and key capabilities in “the making of XaaS.” A common denominator is the platforms that enable customers and partners to connect products and configure service solutions to fit their scope and needs. Where PaaS shifts the OEM perspective from CAPEX to OPEX business value, XaaS requires a shift in perspective from the making of products to the architecting of platforms. Cloud-native platforms, infrastructure, and a culture for continuous co-creation, delivery, and capture of value in services and ecosystems—on the ground, in the cloud, and over the air—are fundamental.
As building blocks of XaaS span across hardware, software, services, cloud computing, and machine learning technology, modularity principles for interfacing between these building blocks and the evolving ecosystem are essential to avoid getting bogged down in complexity. Diverse and changing customer needs, operating contexts (environmental, legal, and cultural), ecosystem complexity, and resource volatility drive companies toward decentralization and regionalization. Companies must rethink the price they place on upstream complexity (including hardware variance and legacy products and systems) to safeguard strategic flexibility and alignment of platforms, organizational learning, and customer success management in the new industrial era. Embedding cybersecurity, platform lifecycle cost, artificial intelligence, data quality and sustainability by design and service first-oriented modularity are essential to offer reliable and configurable services in the omnichannel operational setups and smart contracts of the future.
Key Strategic Perspectives
The following sections provide an excerpt from our session to identify key challenges, priorities and capabilities for each of the five strategic perspectives on the making of XaaS for our Lawncare as a Service scenario.
Customer Success of Services
A deep understanding of customer needs, contextual conditions for success, values, pains, and “wastes” is essential for XaaS. Navigating the paradigm shift driven by artificial intelligence, global and cybersecurity risks, and sustainability challenges, customer success management is a key capability to collect and convert customer insights into scale and scope markets served.
Each location for professional services has it own needs and challenges, like golf course lawncare that needs to consider a range of events, landscape, weather and time constraints when configuring a fleet of robotic lawnmowers that can ensure service delivery as well as safety and user experience for personnel and visitors.
Lifecycle Configurability and Service Excellence
A commitment to service excellence and uptime requires a service-first design perspective. This entails “end-to-end” lifecycle cost perspective and “openness” to deliver OPEX value in the context of customers’ needs and conditions. Fundamental capabilities include modular platforms that enable service configurability and delivery “anywhere anytime” on the ground, in the cloud, and over the air from a network of evolving proprietary and partner capabilities including the installed base.
Configuration of services is adaptive, considering real time and predicted needs across clusters of lawnmowers and service delivery options. Services excellence is the result of a closed loop of data sensing, sharing and service delivery.
Service-Oriented Modularity
The increased complexity of our connected yet geopolitical world, the rise of artificial intelligence and automation, XaaS ecosystems, and sustainability necessitate a reframing of design rules and culture. Disaggregation of legacy systems demands capabilities in balancing and designing out upstream complexity to avoid downstream waste. For example by consolidating or modularization of platforms, while innovating with new technology and open, cloud-native systems.
Designers and product managers connect service and supply chain insights and technology roadmaps with modules in hardware, software to innovate, evolve platforms and deploy to installed or renewal of the fleet.
Infrastructure for XaaS
Understanding the position and power of players in the ecosystem is fundamental. Large players need to explore multiple scenarios, build for speed and new technology through XaaS, as well as a composable infrastructure of capabilities and service platforms. Disruptive and new businesses will depend on razor-sharp strategies for "made" and "bought" as-a-Service capabilities, aligned with an evolving business model and partners in the ecosystem in an ever-changing landscape.
The scope and scale of the "X" in XaaS is governed by physical and digital platforms which enable on-stage execution and front-end of service contracts to align with customer needs and conditions over time, while backstage and back-end infrastructure evolves with demand for capacity, technology and asset lifecycles.
Orchestration of Business, Platforms, and Capabilities
Based on outcomes from an earlier FUTURE LAB, the scenario discussed moves from a transition to PaaS to the making of XaaS. Consequently, critical capabilities lie in customer success management to guide scaling up and expanding the scope of XaaS platforms and business. Specific leadership attention is required for contracting partners in the ecosystem and ensuring compliance of services and data security, while managing new risks and investor expectations associated with XaaS modes of operation and financing.
At the end of the day, insights from these perspectives need to be joined and converted to decisions and foresight. Aligning strategy, scenario playbooks with roadmaps and investments to ensure our services, platforms and business model are fit to lead the future of sustainable lawncare.
What’s next for FUTURE LAB?
By checking in with our network of business leaders and FUTURE LAB fellows we are connecting the dots from the opportunity and necessity of PaaS, connected products with sustainable circular lifecycles (FL1), through cloud-native platforms, infrastructure and modularity into a culture of continuous learning, co-creation, delivery, and capturing of XaaS value — on the ground, in the cloud, and over the air (FL2).
Our next FUTURE LABs will explore new perspectives, sharing XaaS insights, successes and lessons learned, to stage a new strategic conversation on sustainable co-creation based on the principles of modularity and XaaS platforms. We will continue to focus on customer value, strategies and key capabilities when we unpack smart contracts and modular design for sustainable co-creation in XaaS, and high-performance services delivery in evolving ecosystems and an era of change.
