Devising the Operating Models for the As-a-Service Economy

The building blocks of the As-a-Service Economy go beyond technology innovations and include cultural and behavioral issues—offering a broader narrative than most discussions about “digital transformation.” These issues can be broadly grouped around design thinking, capability brokers and more fundamentally the re-skilling of workforces. Infosys provided new reference points for these discussions by reorganizing its next-generation services. Having singled out innovation, automation and artificial intelligence as the road signs for the direction of travel, CEO Vishal Sikka is shifting the perspective toward crystallizing Infosys’s capabilities around three sets of new platforms under the Aikido umbrella brand. By focusing on design thinking, knowledge-based IT and automation, Infosys is strongly aligning itself with the emerging As-a-Service Economy. The necessary next steps are to build out narratives as the adoption of the various offerings varies greatly by customer and segment.

In HfS’ view, the crucial point in Infosys’ new services is not so much the bundling and crystallization of assets, but how the company will be able to drive the cultural and organizational change through its own organization. Infosys’ platform business was struggling for a while and new executive talent might be able to provide new directions. Abdul Razack, who worked with Vishal at SAP, will lead the new platform services. Abdul’s challenge is to integrate a diverse set of industrialization and automation assets for a broad set of use cases. Infosys’ problems in getting the partnership with IPsoft on Autonomics to an industrial scale are a reminder of the challenges ahead. Conversely, both the design thinking and knowledge-based IT services will be led by the consulting division, focusing among other issues on complex problem solving and leveraging the experience of its knowledge-based engineering in a broader IT context.

As Vishal pointed out at the launch event, Aikido originally meant to leveraging a chaotic energy of an opponent in the context of Japanese martial arts.

Not that clients should necessarily be viewed as opponents, but Infosys needs to follow the launch of Aikido up with succinct narratives for the application of these new set of services.

However, it appears unlikely that the potential of these innovative offerings can be achieved with traditional organizational structures. For instance, Infosys’ consultants have a considerable distance to the intricacies of service delivery and run side of the business at large. Infosys should dare to eat its own dog food and apply these services internally to be able to move to “new frontiers.”