[CaptainCrunch]

It was interesting for me when I was in my two prior roles, a ERP consulting and implementation firm, and a HCM solution firm how much things had changed in a pretty short period of time.


For the SMB base having dedicated servers on your own on site, or even off site started fading and it made sense as companies wanted to change cost centters to expense center. Also the role of the internal IT support really started to fade in exchange for a more strategic role.


The biggest shocker to me was the moving of ERP and key financial and information centers to hosted cloud solutions, which really removed the need for dedicated server people who focused on keeping things up to date, and doing backup and disaster recovery and break fix. Companies were bound and determined to exchange that person for someone more strategic. It was the same in the collaboration space, having your own web servers or email solutions on site pretty much vanished.


Even the standard IT consulting firms that would come in and say "We'll look after your IT needs for a hourly or block rate were starting to become a really dated business model.



For an ERP for example it makes more sense to pay lets say $20,000 per year for a hosted solution placed on AWS where the ERP company takes care of all of the backups and disaster recovery and guarantees up time. If you wanted customization you could either use a consulting individual who could run customization or report creation, or use the ERP company itself (IE Deltek, Accumatica).


As opposed to the formerly accepted model of buying the software for 80k or so, buying a server to put on site and having a technical IT person there to manage the server and keep it up to date and deal with down time, that you pay a annual salary to.


One of the companies that I'm talking to deals specifically with data storage and security, and your basically buying space for your data and access. The nice thing about it, is its elastic so if your company goes through down times, you can adjust your licensing to reflect that and reduce costs that way.


I think that in house does have a place in terms of development if your on a large enough scale to need that or your development is part of your product offering, but the day of having server wiz kids or breakfix brains is in its sun set.



I do agree and disagree with one part of the discussion or not, and that's the strategic value of IT strategies. I believe and its the same thing with HR, that those departments that are viewed as necessary but evil cost centers/vacuums with no revenue potential are not given a seat at the table in terms of organization strategy. I think that a company that does not view those departments as extremely strategic to the bottom line of their company are dumb. If anything an IT strategy that can convert cost to expense and find ways to off load traditional IT strategies are further ahead. Its the same with HR, if you can match culture and hiring practices to revenue and ROI your company is enlightened and efficient.