The challenge
Infrastructure service providers compete in a crowded market. Their customers are moving workloads to the cloud while keeping systems on premises, and they expect the two to work together. New tools for running infrastructure at scale arrive constantly, and every one of them adds complexity for the provider that has to deliver it.
Customer expectations, meanwhile, are set by how people shop for everything else. A good service experience means finding what you need quickly, with the related services you are likely to want offered alongside it. The providers that win keep costs down, adopt new technology quickly, and still give customers that kind of experience. Many of them do it by putting a storefront in front of their services.
Aren’t storefronts just a service catalog?
Partly. The terms get confused, and business customers do not care about ITIL. A service catalog is an ITIL concept: a way to define services, their SLAs and OLAs, and who owns each component so the services can be managed. A storefront is about the experience of the person ordering.
The difference is easiest to see in an ice cream shop. You want a scoop of mint chocolate chip in a sugar cone with whipped cream and a cherry on top.
The storefront experience
You see an attractive menu and make your choice: mint chip ice cream with whipped cream, made from organic ingredients. The cone was made by a local bakery and the cherries came from Tuscany. The server suggests white chocolate sprinkles to go with it. You order, pay and leave with exactly what you wanted, already planning to come back next week for the banana split.
The service catalog experience
You get a list of flavors and some options: sugar cone or cake cone, how many scoops. You order mint chip in a sugar cone and learn that the shop does not do whipped cream or cherries. Those come from two partners across town. The shop will order them for you but cannot promise they will arrive or tell you when.
By the time you pay, the cherry has shown up. The whipped cream has not, because the dairy’s cream maker called in sick. The cashier tells you all sales are final and you will need to take it up with the whipped cream people. You just wanted the cone you ordered. Next time you go to the shop down the street.
Infrastructure delivery is complicated, and for a provider that is unavoidable. Your customers should not have to see it. They want easy interaction, and they can choose another provider. Most people buy milk, eggs and bread at the store rather than running a farm. Your customers do not want to farm their own infrastructure either.
Four reasons to build a storefront
1. Add services without changing the customer’s experience
You have already invested heavily in tools that manage and automate your infrastructure. New tools will keep arriving, and they will overlap with what you have. The goal is to avoid rebuilding what already works. A storefront lets you bring in new tools as you are ready for them while customers keep ordering the same way.
2. One place to order complex services is worth a lot to customers
Service Integration and Management (SIAM) is a way to manage services delivered across several towers, where many vendors, processes and tools work together behind the scenes. Your customer does not care that a subcontractor does part of the work, or that you and your vendors use different ticketing systems. They want the service delivered within their contracted SLAs. A self-service storefront gives them that while you keep improving how you deliver and carry out a SIAM strategy.
3. Avoid vendor lock-in with an open storefront
As the provider, you own the customer experience whatever happens behind it. When customers order through a single web storefront, the complexity of back-end delivery stays out of sight. You can replace or upgrade back-end tools without affecting the people who consume your services, so you are not tied to a vendor’s toolset for fear of disrupting customers. That flexibility lowers risk and strengthens your hand in vendor negotiations.
4. Storefronts save money for you and your customers
The service provider business depends on profitable growth. Services that customers can order easily, quickly and without extra labor to deliver are more profitable. Integrated self-service reduces support and delivery overhead and tends to raise customer satisfaction. For the provider that means lower delivery cost, lower total cost of ownership and customers who stay longer, and longer relationships bring more profitable revenue.
Conclusion
A storefront helps a service provider win new customers and, done well, keep them and grow margins. The complexity of delivery stays with the provider, where it belongs, and the customer gets the cone they ordered.