On the eve of the State of the Union address by President Bush, I thought it would be fun to do our own State of the Industry address. I should note that a more in-depth look at this topic can be found in an article that I contributed to in the January issue of Information Today. Over the past year, we've noticed three distinct trends at publishers related to technology services:
- Software as a Service (SaaS) seems to have gained the attention of publishers, but there is still an initial hesitancy at even looking at this technology option. This is certainly understandable since historically publishers managed and maintained their own applications and moving to a technology service that one can’t physically see in a server room can be a culture shift. In addition, security concerns about where and how their content is being stored has slowed the adoption rate.
- Another trend is the blurring of lines between publisher and service provider. In 2005, we saw an increase in the number of publishers taking in-house systems or tools and analyzing how to productize one of their proprietary systems or actually announcing the availability of a tool for other publishers to purchase. This has not traditionally been an area that publishers explored, but with a continued pressure to increase revenue as print revenue erodes, publishers are thinking out-of-the-box.
- There has been an increase in the number of publishers investigating the use of offshore software vendors to build internal applications. Prior to 2005 only the global publishers were in discussions with offshore software vendors, but more and more all publishers are looking to this avenue of software development due to the anticipated cost savings.
Are there other technology service trends that you have seen in the publishing industry?
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