Some of our customers and billing industry contacts are somewhat intrigued (or even bemused) by the upsurge in attention being given to the concept of “subscriptions”. Some are concerned that they’re missing something because, after all, subscriptions have been business-as-usual for most of us for years. So why all the fuss? Does the growth of subscription-type services delivered over the Internet indicate there’s some exciting new business model out there? Are we seeing fundamental changes in the way companies are doing business?
Part of the mythology surrounding subscription services is that there is something fresh and new about this, something that needs a new generation of billing systems optimized for subscriptions. This is puzzling. Subscription services have been around on the Internet since its earliest days. Actually, subscription services in various forms existed decades before the Internet appeared to change our lives. True, the Internet has opened up huge additional opportunities for subscription services, just as it has opened up all sorts of other opportunities – for content distribution, selling products, communicating, and more. In one way or another, we managed to do most of these things in the dark pre-Internet days, but the Internet had truly transformed the scale, reach and cost factors underpinning all of these business activities.