Everyone is jumping on Cloud technologies, and we fully support this trend. We’re focused on it for many reasons; most of which roll up to the over-arching benefits of scale. I wanted to take a minute and speak to a reason that is less apparent, and that is, the ability to shift the way you staff your “IT” team.
A shift to Cloud provides an opportunity to redefine the role of “IT Admin”, which is a title I would not use to define the role. The New IT Worker is more of an Analyst, and should be focused on Applications and Data. Most of them don’t need to know how email works, or how to replicated data to multiple locations. Instead, they need to understand the flow of data, the needs of their colleagues (can we stop calling everyone users, please?), and how that data serves to further the needs of the organization. They work on integrating systems and improving workflows. They get rid of paper, and for that matter, email, by moving to structured databases and automation.
The way forward is to modernize and simplify your infrastructure and shift your staffing budget to Analyst positions that work on apps, data and workflows. This will provide greater overall results from your technology investments.
PS. To our IT Admin friends, we love you! This is not a criticism of the work we’ve all done the last 20 or 30 years, but things are changing rapidly due to Cloud and Software as a Service. We hope you’re investing time to learn Microsoft 365 and Azure. If you are, we’d love to talk about having your join our team to work on our transformation projects!