IT as Service (ISRV)

 IT used to be a wonderland where ‘the magic happened’ within the business. It’s not an exaggeration to say that advances in technology and DIY social platforms have dulled some of the shine. Today, many view IT as the organization that provisions networks and old laptops, both of which are usually considered too restrictive to do the job. CIOs are striving to educate business leaders on the value of IT as strategic business partner, not just a transactional contributor and cost center. 

The IT industry has responded to many cost and value addition challenges by outsourcing functions and focusing on its role as a business interface that drives business value from investments. However, large percentages of IT budgets are still spent on software licenses, depreciation, and projects that smooth transactions. The allocation of resources to help solve problems that would have 10X the business impact is still not optimal. With the philosophy of doing more with less, outsourcing, and consistently trimming IT spend, potential thought leaders have become task-oriented and swamped by busy work.

 Advances in cloud technology have made application choices abundant. While businesses can experiment quickly with a low cost of entry, not all cloud applications are created equal. Assembling different cloud applications without an architectural vision increases security risk, cost inefficiencies, and local optimization. There are platforms in the cloud that are great at certain functions and very good at others. However, for small- and medium-sized organizations that needs to innovate with speed and invest in core competencies, the cost to enter can be prohibitive.

 To be successful, any modern IT organization must do the following:

1.  Enable the business to fail fast: Enable the business to perform multiple experiments with tweaks till they win big.

2.      Secure the data: Security of intellectual, physical, and information assets is critical and non-negotiable.

3.      Optimize resources: Optimize the cost of transactions (cost/txn/module) and depreciation, and enable bandwidth for business engagement and thought leadership.

4.      Optimize speed and scalability: Optimize capacity and capabilities very fast, on the fly. Adding additional capabilities should be as seamless as deploying a phone app.

 For businesses to win, IT’s evolving business scenario needs a new paradigm. The value is in open source and economical applications optimized for certain functions. The “secret sauce” is the ability to integrate these applications, enable a workflow, and seamlessly integrate business processes. Capabilities must be deployed in the ecosystems as seamlessly as applications are deployed cell phones, regardless of whether the platform is machine learning, big data, or analytics. 

 When you enable peer collaboration and share capabilities, the cost of launching new capabilities for others is significantly reduced. Also, organizations contributing to the design and development of these capabilities can earn royalties. This collaborative approach enables industry best practices, reduces customizations, and cuts the cost of enhancements and customizations that are bleeding organizations.

  Yes, focusing on transactions takes time away from innovations, but not focusing on transactions can destroy a company.  It’s time for a flexible platform that can take care of transactions, operations and free up leaders to innovate and win. It’s also time for a platform that can replace IT services, including infrastructures. Any company with an Internet connection should be able to launch a sophisticated IT organization within hours, at a fraction of the cost, and without hiring an army of consultants or employees. It is entirely conceivable to foresee such platforms becoming mainstream in this decade. 

It is time for IT as a Service (ISRV) to bring the magic back.