IT as Service (ITaaS) is now a reality for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). SMBs face a unique set of challenges: low working capital, lack of expertise, difficulty in attracting and retaining IT talent, etc. ITaaS can help these organizations to reduce their upfront IT costs and keep up with changes in the available technology.
The way that IT is currently used by most small businesses is not very much unlike the way a generator is used to produce electricity. Generators:
- Are not the most efficient means of getting the job done
- Result in tremendous losses, since they are built inefficiently by design—they are bought to meet peak demand, and therefore will always result in greater resource consumption than actual usage
- Offer limited scope for improvement—even the best support person can only maintain your equipment for you—not turn it into a cheap, clean and effective resource
IT management presents SMBs with a similar set of problems. Companies that have the infrastructure in place are unable to utilize it efficiently, and end up spending much more than they need to. Hiring an expert to manage the infrastructure is expensive, and attrition rates are high, because talented staff will always be interested in seeking out more challenging jobs in larger organizations.
SMBs urgently need to find ways of optimizing their resource consumption. And with connectivity improving, technology becoming more available and more affordable, an increasing number of SMBs are seeing the benefit in moving to the cloud.
ITaaS gives these companies:
- A complete and truly integrated IT platform
- High efficiency with effective resource utilization
- No need to invest heavily in infrastructure or manage multiple vendors
- Customized solutions—the evolutionary approach adopted by cloud service providers takes changing technology landscape and changing business needs into account
How is your enterprise coping with the need to optimize resource use and cut costs? Leave us a note below.