Choosing and maintaining business IT is a constant, ongoing struggle for most businesses. Businesses want IT to improve people efficiency, automate repetitive tasks, and give employees the freedom to work in a way that suits them. Changing work practices such as home and mobile working, job shares, increasing parental and carers rights and flexibility all put pressures on a companies IT systems. "Corporate refugees" moving from a large corporate to a small business and new younger workers all expect IT systems that work for them, not against them. Businesses are challenged by both internal and external forces to have the latest, most appropriate technology to keep them competitive.
The conventional supply chain for many smaller businesses is either to self-serve using a "consumer" IT provider or to use an IT advisor who will suggest and maybe maintain and support the solution provided. Unfortunately in this model it is clear that it is in the IT advisors interest for their customer to keep buying more hardware and updating software to drive more billable training and support hours, this does not happen in all cases but it is usual for a business to "try" many providers before finding one that works for them, and sometimes they never do! Worst of all is if the company adopts the DIY approach without the investments needed in resources and training. In this case research shows that it is normally the person in an organisation with an interest in IT that gets the responsibility for advising and maintaining the systems, this solution is designed to fail at some point when the person leaves, or changes roles, or has a "little knowledge", that can be a dangerous thing.
I have thought for a long time, learning through bitter experience that the traditional IT delivery model does not serve the interests of the customer and I think the SaaS model goes a long way to addressing many of the built-in shortcomings
Mark
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