Scenarios for Management of Digital Homes

The digital home environment creates business opportunities for various firms. However, the growing complexity and management workload of home systems is leading to degrading usability. In this paper, we discuss the business dynamics of the digital home environment. We suggest that lower usability will slow down the adoption of digital services, and therefore we present a novel view that focuses the attention on management of digital homes. We explain the management hierarchy of the home environment, and construct four scenarios that describe the possible directions of evolution. Throughout the paper, we pay special attention to broadband access operators, since we consider them strong candidates for becoming management service providers. Therefore, we present possible management-related business models that broadband access operators could use when formulating their business strategies. Our analysis shows that management service provision is an important business driver.