Life As A Service

I’m a positive support of digital innovation and transformation and actively encourage innovation and future progress in this field, not only from the neat and novel apps that gently improve our life’s from adjusting our heating and light based on our presence, through to the benefits technology brings to our family lives by allowing us to work more productively, from anywhere and travel far less, but also down to the key and clear benefits technology will bring and already is bringing to our health.

The reality is that Technology and digital innovation is here to stay and we’ve only scratched the surface of what’s possible in my opinion. We will see the advent of more and more digital services that will solve problems we don’t yet realise we have, or bring solutions we can’t live without....however, there may be trouble ahead….and the trouble is cost.

In the busy and now maturer world of digital technology there are no shortage of great ideas and now very wide number of players competing to bring you these services. These vary from innovators thinking of a great idea, through to teams of Research and Development executive planning the next big thing. The common denominator is that neither are charity and while one may innovate from passion of a great idea or belief and the other to grow a revenue line on a balance sheet the reality is both will need to make money from their idea at some stage in order for it to survive. This leads to two options for the developers, it either funds itself through advertising or fees such as Facebooks model of a service funded by advertising, Just Eats fees to its food retailing partners or Ubers service where one party pays a fee and the other parties funds it. The other option is the user pays, that would be us then… such as Apple Music, AmazonPrime, Cloud backup of Phones in iCloud or Photo Storage sites, Netflix’s, O365 etc etc, the list goes on and on, and here lies a call out for concern.

I’m going to call this Life As A Service

Firstly, let’s take a look at your own current digital lives and the associated costs. You are likely reading this on a mobile device with a data package, likely unlimited, possibly with an insurance service of some sort, after all these devices are pricey and we like to have the latest tech. What would it cost if we lost our phone. Then when we get home, you will automatically switch to your home broadband supplier WiFi, which has gradually over time increased in speed and no longer limited in capacity,

You might then open a parcel as you arrive home this evening, which was a must have item, that you justify to yourself because it was a great deal and as a Prime member you do get free next day delivery of course, so why not...forgetting that we pay £80 yearly for this great price and convenience.

And phew what a day and with dinner you might enjoy the other delivery of grown up Ribenna, thank the lord, and if you do the maths after you’ve had just enough of the wine, you can quickly justify that monthly wine ordering that not only saves you money but as an actual investment. Wine can actually increase in value if you keep the right bottle for long enough, this hasn’t happened for me as yet working on the keeping a bottle part

So far we are in good shape, new items arrived, groceries too, with wine and you haven’t left the house yet. So now it’s time to sit back and enjoy a film or box set, which again you pay for. The TV license gathers dust as you delve into one of two or three additional subscription channels to try to find something new to watch...you’ll now spend the next hour or two trying to find something you can both agree on, during which if you have enough wine in the system, you begin explain who Chuck Norris is and why you feel both him and Danny dyer are underrated actors or suggesting Top Gun, Ferris Buller or Dirty Dancing, at an additional cost of course as these classics are not included in the monthly fee… this is all before giving up and say let’s put some music on.

So you turn to that impressive CD collection alphabetically in order, with music for every mood. You still have this, right? Yes but like mine it’s now in a box in the loft, but thanks to Spotify or Apple music we now have millions of tracks at our disposal to choose from and due to the wine, we instead play the music stored in our lofts listed in play listed titled, (I miss rave 91 to 95 the warehouse years, 80 unlimited, Motown classics, and guilty pleasures, little mix)

We reminisce from the music and wine as a photo pops up in a timeline that is safely stored in a digital cloud library...at a fee. A service storing our memories forever, we are customers for life as they hold the memories of our life.

The vegan tofu you had earlier has now worn off completely and the suggestion of a kebab is the best idea you’ve had so far today. A quick check in on Just East or Deliveroo and you’re mins away from carb and gluten meltdown. The first digital service you’ve used today that hasn’t actually cost you.. well in a fashion.

The gym membership is still there people and we’ve got all week to use that too by the way.

In summary, these are all services that we are willing and happy to pay for, we pay for the instancy , we pay for the convinces and the model is growing. After all they only add up to a few pounds each month right…

In fairness ‘Things as a service’ is nothing new. We’ve leased cars, or part of cars for years. Deals allowing us to drive new cars for the same price as a second hand one.

Our mobile phones had to be leased in the early days as we just couldn’t afford the high price of the handsets and this has gone full circle again as phone went back in price the more sophisticated they became, with us now spending close to a thousand pounds a phone without flinching, after all we can spread the costs..

We’re no strangers to spreading the cost across our lives, from the use of credit cards and loans to buy things quickly that we could by saving and we enjoy the instanceness of this, as our demand for instancy grows with digital the call is, there is now end point, no final instalment for Digital. It will become ‘Life As A Service’.

Our Digital Debt

Open up your banking app right now and scroll through your last months outgoings. Ignore the kebabs and coffee, these are life essentials people ! Now consider what services are on here that didn’t exist 2, 5 or 10 years ago… here some of mine. Which ones could go…

Mobile £105 per month ( I have two kids and a personal mobile)

Broadband £55 per month (super fast)

WiFi increased capacity £9.99 per month

Next day delivery / TV £80 per year. - is prime that much cheaper for this annual fee and who doesn’t offer next day now… but will I change now

Additional TV streaming service £13 per month,

Photo Storage £80 per year

Phone data backup £5 - per month, i have a few

Gaming Services for the kids £65 per month - this shocked me !

Family PC software (o365) - £5 per month

Sat Nav update £105 per year for live traffic on my car sat nav, but this can go due to new free services

Home security services £120 annual live monitoring fee

Adobe Photoshop - £39 per month

McAfee Antivirus-£5 per month

Video Editing software - £4.99 per month

…. The list goes on !!

While we have ‘must service costs’ in our daily life’s such as mortgages, utilities and car loans to keep a roof over our heads and a car to take us to find work, the question here is how long could we survive without our current wage cheque to keep our digital lives over our heads. Sure we might deem these things as luxury’s, but does that mean we could switch off the photo library storage if needed, what happens to our memories, or the back up for our phones, what do the kids do if we stops their on line communication with friends and what do they play if the games you now stream stop streaming. Digital is a massive advantage to our lives but is also becoming a massive challenge in our lives.

A young couple I know recently went to the bank for a mortgage, both are university educated, have good jobs in big companies and you would say they are very suitable candidates for a mortgage without a second of hesitation, yet the bank turned them down flat! Why, because their outgoings are too high. Interesting the banks main focus was on the cost of their car loans/lease, and as they do both drive nice cars, but cant we all nowadays thanks to Cars As A Service. This is nothing new for the banks, but the clear space they used to rely on to give us the mortgage is now quickly disappearing and the banks answer was to go away and save up a bigger deposit, but how will we do this if the increasing digital services each into this spare fund each month. Overall begging the question of what’s the future of the home, but that’s another Chapter/Blog.

My call out here is what do we really need in our digital lives, what are the alternatives and how will the future of these services develop. Digital is progressing without consultation to the wider world it is infiltrating and we are demand more and more instancy and improvements without fully understanding the cost. The banks are no doubt asking themselves the same questions, as they cant continue to turn down previously very eligible customers.

Digital isn’t just changing our lives in the small novel ways it appears ‘ for just a few pounds a month’ its changing the entire landscape of our future and we need to take note.