What binds the Social Media, SaaS and Cloud Services together?

Looking for a link between the 3 concepts, the first word that makes sense and seems like the “glue” is the word change:

• Social media is changing the communication between consumers and businesses. Communication is shifting from One-to-many to the Many-to-many model.

• SaaS (Software as a Service) is changing the way on how businesses and consumers buy software. Where the buying process is license based shifting to be service based on demand.

• Cloud services - is changing the way of how hardware and Software products will be sold to businesses and consumers. Capacity and volume is going from be on a dedicated server to be on a cloud device.

Social Media is a key enabler for SaaS because it enables low cost and effective marketing and sales capabilities. The resellers are not ready for any of these changes either in selling and delivering products as services. The resellers will be looking to their vendors for leadership in this new paradigm. Some traditional vendors are going to push their resellers into bankruptcy by pressuring them to sell products rather than Cloud services. The old channel/paradigm is going to have to make some tough choices very soon. A new channel is going to emerge to specialize in selling Cloud services and not hardware or software products. (Mike Dubrall 2010)

One reason it is so difficult for the vendors to change from selling licenses and products is the struggle to make the same high profit in selling software as a service and cloud services. The profit in selling the new services has to be found in the social media way of thinking and the google model of selling advertising space together with your services. Social media is critical. It gives everyone “hands-on” experience and a glimpse of how channels and costumers of the future are going to look and act.

As we can see the costumer has gained a central place in the strategy thinking as companies in the traditional (Old paradigm) tried to “attack” the costumer with pervasive messages to make them buy more products/services. With the “Social Media” a new turn has been taken to get the costumer to the next level to join, co-create critic the company’s product and marketing strategy in short to make the costumer an influencer/collaborator rather than  autonomous on the product (Mohr & Nevin 1990).