BPaaS vs. BPO -- A rose by any other name???

[#1]

I was in a discussion this morning where an individual was talking about Business Process as a Service (BPaaS) and its role in organizations adopting cloud. I had to stop the meeting and ask: “Aren’t you really talking about Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)?”

A bit of dancing went on about the “as a service” model… and how it is different, but when we dug into the differences, they began to evaporate.

BPO has been around for decades and has always been multi-tenant, pay by the drink and most of the o... Sure you don’t normally buy it using a charge card, but it is very flexible. It seems to be that those that use BPaaS are essentially “cloud washing” a concept that has been well understood and adding value for q.... What do you think? Is it really different??

[#2]

By Mark Yujuico, HPES CRM Product Marketing.

I struggled with this a bit as well – not sure if I’m getting the author’s take on it correctly, but it almost seems as if BPaaS is something one accesses through a browser, enters some info which is run through some standard business process, and maybe gets some sort of a response or just a confirmation that the process is complete.  Doesn’t seem like there are any people involved, which is very different from our BPO offerings.  Dunno – maybe I’m wrong.  I found this a hard read…

But here’s an excerpt as it defines BPaaS in the public cloud:

BPaaS

Element

Definition:  Business-process-as-a-service (BPaaS) involves the provisioning of highly standardized

end-to-end business processes delivered via dynamic, pay-per-use, and self-service

consumption models. The key difference to traditional BPO services is that the

underlying resources used to run the business processes are openly shared among

different customers. In most instances, the sharing of the data even drives additional

business value.

Business value-add: BPaaS also leverages resource elasticity for human resources and can ideally

complement fluctuating transaction volumes or availability of own employees. A major

value contribution comes from the high standardization of business processes, which

allows the exchange of human resources between different “tenants.”

Hypergrowth begins: Hypergrowth has yet to start for this new, innovative market. While there are currently

only a limited number of online business processes available from external service

providers, there are many opportunities for standard processes as well as totally new

processes provided in this new delivery model.

Saturation: Not more than 50% of the possible BPaaS use cases will subscribe to this service model,

as privacy, security, and compliance concerns remain significant obstacles.

Usage scenarios: For example, online payment processing, HR management, and help desk operations

can be highly standardized, so that different customers can use the same resources

and underlying best practices. Compared with traditional BPO, BPaaS contracts are much

more flexible and allow, for example, for the short-term termination of contracts without

extra penalties. The business process can be supported by an SaaS application that

the customer’s internal employees and the BPaaS provider’s resources can use jointly.

Vendors/providers examples: BPaaS is still a nascent business model. Vendors like Meeting Expectations (which

provides event management) and PayPal operate in selected niches, with some

contributions from innovative BPO providers.

Take-over time: Cloud providers will offer an increasing number of processes over time. Thus, it is hard

to predict when saturation of this market might occur; it’s also hard because new,

innovative web based processes will become available. We assume that after the start of

the hypergrowth phase, BPaaS will remain a very dynamic growth market for a long

time — i.e., at least 10 years.

Market dynamic Creation

Market size 2011 (US$ billions): $0.53

[#3]

The Blog is really logical. The first comment itself explains the further conclusion.