You look at most industries and, over time, either the products or services on offer do tend to become more utility-based. Xansa chief executive Alistair Cox says there are a range of potentially disruptive innovations that might change the path of the IT outsourcing industry.

But he does not believe there is a whizz-bang new technology that is either with us right now or about to appear that will rewrite the rulebook.

‘Everything that we need to move to the business services ethos exists today, it just needs to be assembled in a slightly different way – but all the components are there,’ he says.

‘You look at most industries and, over time, either the products or services on offer do tend to become more utility-based and, in many cases, more commodity-driven as well.

Take a look at aspects of the IT business. You look at power, you look at bandwidth, you look at storage: all three of those areas have moved or are moving to a utility model.

Organisations, and suppliers, have to be able to move away from bespoke solutions so that they can offer standardised services delivered as utility business models.

Cox says software as a service is an interesting concept that has been around for a while now – and which has yet to really find its legs. However, he says there is no reason why it should not become popular.

‘I think software as a service will follow in the footsteps of power and storage,’ says Cox. ‘The question then is, at what stage can the services themselves start to become more utility-focused and should they even become utility-focused? What will drive that is a very different service delivery model.’

Cox says the industry should perhaps stop charging customers based on the number of people times rate-card, and start charging on a cost per web site hit recorded.

‘In that respect, the supplier has to own the way of doing something to avoid being commoditised, which involves owning all of the knowledge – and possibly the application – to be able to provide that business service,’ he says.