Classroom Companion: Business

Definition 6.2
A digital service is a networked zero marginal cost service that has value for indi-
viduals or organizations.
 
Chapter 6 · Digital Goods and Services

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75
6
The XaaS concept is a generic name for 
several commercially available types of 
enabling services. The most common are 
Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform 
as a Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure 
as a Service (IaaS). Different combina-
tions of enabling services are illustrated 
in 
.
Fig.
6.1
.
Services are intangible by nature. Digital services include posting news on social 
media, electronic banking, Internet access, multiplayer online gaming, web 
browsing, and composing and sending e-mails. The difference between a digital 
good and a digital service is somewhat blurry. This is illustrated by two exam-
ples. The data on a Facebook account is a digital good, while the use of Face-
book for any purpose is a digital service. Music tracks stored on Spotify’s 
servers are digital goods, while the use of Spotify to listen to music is a digital 
service.
Network access and transmission of data over fixed and mobile networks, as 
well as data storage and data processing, are also digital services. These services 
are not only digital services in their own right but are also enablers for other digi-
tal goods and services. As such, they are also called enabling or fundamental tech-
nologies. This means that the value proposition of all other digital goods and 
services depend critically on these technologies. Moreover, the providers of digital 
goods and services usually benefit from the enabling technologies without invest-
ing directly in them. For example, Facebook uses the worldwide Internet to sup-
port its value proposition but has not contributed to the development and 
management of the Internet as such. Offering enabling services as a commercial 
product has become a new business arena referred to as Anything as a Service 
(XaaS), also known as cloud computing. Cloud computing and XaaS were 
described in 
7
Sect. 
4.4
 in the context of business ecosystems. 
7
Box 
6.1
 lists 
some examples of XaaS.