Recipe
| Key Partners | Key Activities | Value Propositions | Customer Relationships | Customer Segments | |||||
| Key Resources | Channels | ||||||||
| Cost Structures | Revenue Streams | ||||||||
How: Let customers outsource their physical processes and technologies in a standardized virtual environment.
Why: Let customers interact with the virtualized process from any location or device while possibly reducing hardware and maintenance dependencies and costs. Often better uptime, responsiveness, and security follow due to economies of scale.
This business model is part of the Business Model Patterns printed card deck.
A collection of business models that will help you understand the key drivers of business model success. The card deck will be ready for purchase in the end of 2023 and is now undergoing rigorous testing.
Reserve your deck!The virtualization pattern describes the emulation of a traditional physical process within a digital realm, such as a virtual workspace. This not only allows for increased accessibility to the process from any location or device, but also necessitates payment for access to the virtual service.
Where did the Virtualization business model pattern originate from?
The rise of Virtualization as a business model went from being focused mostly on virtualizing infrastructure to virtualizing day-to-day tools as the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world starting from 2020. The challenges of face-to-face interactions and travelling made remote work emerge as the dominant mode of operation, facilitated by advanced online collaboration tools. Platforms such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams have effectively virtualized the process of organizing and facilitating meetings and other forms of working sessions, while Miro and Mural have replicated the processes behind the content of these sessions.
Trigger Questions
- Can you mitigate the risk of a big permanent investment by virtualizing actual work or physical hardware?
- Can you use virtualization to cope with a fluctuating demand?
Examples
Citrix
Its Desktop as a Service moves the customer’s desktop to the cloud, making it accessible from any device or location.
Upwork
Connecting companies and individuals with people willing to help, the need for a permanent workforce can be eliminated.
Doctor On Demand
Connecting companies and individuals with people willing to help, the need for a permanent workforce can be eliminated.
Source: Doctor on Demand website
Related plays
- The Third Wave of Virtual Work by Harvard Business Review
- Understanding Virtual Work by Dr Kaire Holts
- Zeekit website by Zeekit
- Reimagining the postpandemic workforce by Andrea Alexander, Aaron De Smet, and Mihir Mysore