Rise Of The Platforms

Platforms are becoming one of the most important concepts in business today. But it’s a term that’s widely over-used, covering anything from data management tools or cloud services to enterprise resource planning. Businesses think about business platforms when exposing select capabilities via product-inspired APIs. And development teams think more in terms of building platforms, both for integration and improved developer experience.

So how do you work out what platforms mean to you?

Part of our Seismic Shifts series

Companies such as Apple, Uber and Airbnb understood how platforms bring together consumers and providers to create new sources of value, and reshape their competitive landscape. Part of their success comes from finding a useful level of encapsulation and capabilities. Increasingly, “platform thinking” appears across the ecosystem.

Platforms have the power to transform organisations. That’s why many industry watchers now believe that platform thinking is the key to future success. And why so many organizations are deliberately and systematically building technical systems and business capabilities as the foundation for something bigger.

Beyond technical platforms, to platforms for business innovation.

Business leaders have begun to realize that public and private clouds are merely technical delivery platforms and must be augmented with business-focused capability platforms, exactly like those built by industry leaders.

Platforms that enable new business capabilities and foster innovation are created by combining technology and enterprise strategy. Today’s leaders are no longer content with offering simple products or services: they understand that tomorrow’s winners will be those with the most capable platforms.