Optimisation, Dematerialisation, Virtualisation.
Optimisation, dematerialisation, virtualisation.its ALL about making your investments work harder or smarter. Whether it be Data Centre, or supply chain, real estate, land, or logistics or other infrastructure that is not fully utilised. Lets start with Data Centre.
The Data Centre has become hot topic in reducing the costs by increasing utilisation through moving to virtualisation technology. In some cases this can go from 10-15% utilisation (industry average) to up to 80% utilization making the ROI a no brainer. The leader in this space has been VMware, however, Microsoft is fast taking share and the upcoming release of Windows Server R2 together with System Centre management tools and attractive licensing models will seriously challenge the VMware lead in this space.
Ok that was GreenIT.
Now what if we took same approach to say logistics. What is with delivery vans operating at 30% capacity? Presumably moving goods is not core business of most companies so why not share the infrastructure. Take electronics industry - no reason Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, et al can't create a system which allows them to trade empty slots in their vans. Ticks a lot of boxes in terms of costs, emissions, traffic congestion, etc.
What about real estate? Many large organisations and public sector organisations do not fully utilise their office space. Why not collaborate and make space available to local workers to provide a Third space.
In fact this idea is underpinned by the general need for a plethora of efficient B2B trading platforms some which exist today in a fragmented way.
The platform is a classic cloud service application where individuals or companies can participate through multiple user devices.
Love to hear more ideas and whether some enterprising company has created a general purpose platform. Perhaps it is the next market for eBay to apply itself to?
