Several weeks ago I wrote What's Wrong With Telecom and after pondering it over, I see opportunities while it may be old news for some.Who's checking your spending? Come on, if my customers don't understand, explain to me how you get your internal customers to understand. Is it called consultative selling?
Why is everything so complicated? Cloud computing will shift more jobs out of the corporate office into the cloud and equate with less dependence upon IT internal employees and more support coming from IT vendors.
What's with all the redundant systems and overbuilt data centers? Did you get caught in the trap: "Well, if we grow 35% per year and can generate additional revenues by making new products or services then we must have another server, router, RAID or widget capable of XYZ."
It's never secure! Even when you think it is secure, some hack comes along and proves you wrong. Breaches in security aren't always external; sometimes it's an internal employee or customer.
Can't you control your users? Why do your internal users seek to bypass you and the IT department? They go around you, seek out cheaper solutions that often offer immediate results but end up making your job more complicated.
According to a Pricewaterhousecoopers study, more IT spending isn't creating more value. PwC cites that just 13% of IT dollars directly contribute to innovating the business process or products while 87% of IT dollars go towards the black hole called "maintenance and upkeep."
Telecom people better know how to do capacity planning for wire plants, telephony systems and call centers. Telecom folks also know how to take the user's pulses and determine what's working and what isn't. They also know VALUE and how to do NPV projections and what it means when it's a button on a calculator.
While convergence offers economies, still unanswered and inadequately addressed are complexities that convergence may bring into the fold. Then, adapting new or re-trained skill sets to think differently is in order. The numbers PwC cites are upside down. No maintenance costs should be 87% of the budget. Targeting and delivering value in the enterprise doesn't mean outsourcing the problem to someone else. Senior executives are asking a lot of questions these days, many of which are surprising, but in light of what IT is or isn't doing, it's causing quite a stir. Down economies always do seem to shake things up. Now, for the flip side of "What's Wrong With IT?" read here.
