Not too long ago, a respected voice on IT and cloud technology, Paul Wallbank, announced the death of the IT guy. He painted a picture of how good times once looked for IT support guys:
“Maintaining office servers and looking after the regular glitches in desktop computers was a steady, reliable source of income for most support companies,” Wallbank explained.
“Every few years businesses or homes would upgrade their computers and that would trigger a cascade of costs as data was migrated and older peripherals like printers, serial mice and ADB accessories had to be replaced.”
As you can see, life was sweet for the IT guy, revenues were high and regular, and an ample living could be made with relative ease.
But IT support guys have fallen on harder times. The old model no longer applies. Disruptive technologies such as cloud have meant that companies no longer need to perform hardware and system upgrades every couple of years. And many business processes can be performed without any specialist IT expertise.
With tough economic times around the world, frugal habits have become the modus operandi for organisations. And IT is at the top of the list for cost-cutting.
Suddenly, the IT guy is being forced out...left out in the cold with broken dreams and just the Star Wars t-shirt on his back.
The IT Guy Strikes Back
The IT guy needs to take a big decision. His future is at stake. He needs to take a long hard look in the mirror. Yet in fact, the decision is simple....either hang on to the old IT model and suffer a slow and painful death, or embrace the future and carve a niche for himself.
You may be forgiven for seeing the future differently. After all, Microsoft’s Bill Gates once said that ‘640k ought to be enough’ and IBM’s Thomas Watson is often attributed with saying that ‘there is a world market for maybe five computers.’
But however you look at it, cloud technologies are growing and are here to stay. For example, IDC's Australian Cloud Services 2011-2015 Forecast and Analysis report showed the market for cloud services in this country to be $470.3m in 2010. This figure is forecast to soar to $2,030m by 2015 with a compound annual growth rate of 34%. Factor in research from Gartner which shows that cloud services will make up 20% of IT budget spend by 2013, and offering cloud services becomes more logical.
While the figures support choosing the new model, there may be a tendency to pull up the drawbridge and try to hold on to what you’ve got. As Paul Wallbank explains,"there are a few holdouts trying to keep the old business model alive who have a hundred reasons why cloud services are no good for their customers.”
The argument that data security in the cloud is inferior to in-house solutions is usually number one of those hundred reasons. Yet the figures contradict that argument with 82% of companies using multiple cloud services.
This is all well and good...BUT...how does the IT guy carve a niche for himself with the new model for IT?
The force can be with you
Jedis IT guys who embrace the new IT model are quickly discovering its value. As Paul Wallbank explains, “Sensible IT folk have understood the change and the good support companies now have an armoury of cloud-based services for their customers.”
Software-as-a-Service (Saas) has significantly enhanced the range of services that the IT guy can offer to his customer base. Furthermore, these services go beyond the scope of what many IT support guys delivered using the old model. Rather than being a break-fix guy, you can now deliver strategic value-laden projects to your customer base – accounting, CRM, HR, support and almost any business function you can think of.
Adopting this new approach is likely to see the IT guy transform from the aforementioned (and often belittled) break-fix operator to the role of trusted advisor. Because services are fully managed and provided by specialists, they are typically just as effective, and often better supported as those kept in-house. By offering cloud solutions, the IT guy can dramatically reduce their heavy burden of low value support, and spend more time growing their customer base.
What’s more, each implemented service can generate a recurring stream of revenue. Whilst the outdated IT model provides one-off revenues at unpredictable times, the new model delivers solid recurring revenue each and every month.
The support guy isn’t dead; he’s just turned away from the dark side. As Yoda says...
“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”
Disclaimer: we'd like to acknowledge that we know plenty of IT support girls and that not everyone likes Star Wars.
