Poor IT management can cost a company far more than the physical cost of maintaining IT services. It can impact and affect several areas of the company from payroll to human resources.  I have been working in IT for many years and have seen the IT business structure become reliant on reactive, instead of proactive, solutions. These are certainly not my ideas alone, but I have seen enough to believe that the problem is wide spread throughout many businesses.

In many ways, martial arts can be an appropriate metaphor for running a business. For example, there are probably hundreds of thousands of entry-level martial arts studios available for beginning students. It doesn’t really matter what martial art you decide to study, only that you get started and learn whether the art is right for you. However, as you grow in ability and dedication, you find that your needs sharpen and you need a higher level of expertise to guide you along the right path. You need a master.

I was talking to a business owner the other day who asked me “If I’m in the cloud, what do I need IT services for?” Inwardly, I groaned, because this is a question I’m hearing more often these days – and it represents a misunderstanding about the ‘magic’ of cloud services. The cloud is powerful, and has the ability to save companies thousands of dollars on things like the upkeep of a data center, but ultimately it’s just another deployment model. A deployment model with its own set of challenges, risks and questions that need answering.