Intelligence Among Us

This is an update to the compelling Shift Happens video.  Everyone I show it to is both awed and overwhelmed about the potential implications. 

I see this as not only our reality but a huge opportunity.  More to follow but take a look at the video.  I’m interested in your thoughts.

IT must have a seat at the strategic decision making table.  In order to earn that seat IT must make an ongoing business to understand your organization’s core business.  Too many IT departments never gain the required business knowledge , see themselves as nothing more than a “service” department and begin to focus on providing services that they shouldn’t.

IT needs to get out of the role of constant firefighting and become much more focused on strategic issues that will be impacting the organization going forward.  In order to do that IT needs to have rock solid infrastructure in place.  In my view, that means outsourcing any service that does not directly impact key business processes of your organization.

Email??  Why not look at hosted email services?  Do your IT people need to be experts in managing email infrastructure or do they need to be experts in helping make your business more competitive, lean and agile?  All businesses rely on email which in my view makes an even more compelling case to leaving to the experts.  Every minute one of your people spends managing email servers/issues is time they are not spending on your business.

Data Storage??  Why not look at the cloud?  This one is still a relatively new area but Amazon has recently announced their Elastic Block Store which is essentially limitless data storage which can be added to on the fly for a fraction of what it would cost to manage that infrastructure internally.  Does having people on staff that understand SAN architecture and all the associated peripheral knowledge make sense?  Possibly, but we need to be thinking outside the box.  Your competitors are.  Actually this is not even outside the box anymore.  This just makes sense.

Portals? SharePoint?  Why in the world an organization would want to manage all the infrastructure and complexity of an installation of something like a SharePoint farm is beyone me – unless you are a SharePoint hosting company I suppose.  I speak from painful personal experience here.  There are options out there.

I think of it this way.  If I was launching a greendfield manufacturing facility my IT team would have to make a damn compelling case for each server they want to have on site.   Being at the fore of the coming IT revolution means being able to focus on your business and leaving all the other stuff to the experts.  Be an expert on your business.