Death of the definition?

I sure hope so...

The once worthy quest of defining managed print services has become at best a caricature of itself and at worst a gimmick.

MPS Insights had this to say about such ambitions:

"MPS is complex as a product, including hardware, services, software and consulting. Since it is new for (nearly) everybody, there has been a fair amount of discussion regarding the proper definition of the term. And just to compound the issue, a player with a printer background will have a different view of the world and a different view of the MPS industry and products than a player with an MFP (or consumables, or service, or . . .) background."

and a bit later in the same article noted:

"New participants are joining the industry all the time: vendors, channel partners and clients. While the discussion is no longer new for us, it is certainly new (and highly relevant) for them."

"There are a lot of alpha animals in this industry. Rather than adopting somebody else’s definition and methodology, many feel compelled to develop, promote and defend their own version."

The above quotes seem to suggest that there will never be an accepted definition of MPS for all people within the industry as a whole...

And why should there be?

Lets face it, because of the egos involved there will never be "the" definition of MPS. Everyone wants to be the best. There are the alpha animals and those who want to be the alpha animals and as long as there are at least 2 managed print services programs owned by different companies there will always be disagreements about what managed print services definition is.

It would also seem that most of us are aware of this truth and yet new blog posts speaking of "this guys" definition of managed print services surface almost daily. Why is this? Can't find something better to blog about? Is there enjoyment in beating a dead horse?

What ever the reason, I would hope that this parlor trick of a topic disappears soon...