Bridging the Services Chasm: Aligning Services Strategy to Maximize Product Success

Bridging the Services Chasm provides a comprehensive framework companies can use to make critical service strategy decisions that have rapidly become the difference between product success and market failure. Based on the analysis of technology providers, this book leverages a combination of public record, unique survey data, and direct interaction to clearly define the critical role services is now playing in the success of product companies. In 1991, Geoffrey Moore published Crossing the Chasm. This seminal work framed and defined the specific challenges that companies face as they attempt to drive new product offerings to market. Since then, a new set of strategy challenges for product-centric companies has become evident. And there is a new chasm that companies must decide how to cross: The Services Chasm. Bridging the Services Chasm frames the services strategy decisions product companies can no longer afford to defer and provides a clear path for action.

Thomas E. Lah serves as the executive director for the Technology Services Industry Association. TSIA has over two hundred leading technology companies participating in benchmarking and research on the role of services within product companies. Member companies include EMC, CA, Hewlett Packard, SAP, and Xerox. In his role as executive director, he writes, researches, speaks, and advises on the topic of building and optimizing professional service organizations in the technology industry. He also teaches an MBA class at The Ohio State University, focused on the frameworks from his books Building Professional Services and Mastering Professional Services. He holds an undergraduate degree in Information Systems and an MBA from the Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University.