I was fortunate enough to see Nicholas Carr of "Does IT Matter?" and "The Big Switch" fame speak in mid-February, and I have to say he weaves an interesting story on the cloud and disruption. He points out that over the years, there has been a lot of effort put into studying disruptive technologies. And, what usually happens is customers sit on the current technology trend, evolving themselves to achieve incrementally better results until there is this big switch - and the disruptive technologies take over and are widely adopted. The early adopters often get to make the market and build in their advantage while the slower movers are seriously disadvantaged playing catch up. Disruptor or disrupted, it is your choice.
This got me thinking. Why, with many statements that "cloud" is a disruption to the business of IT, are we intent on applying existing technology to try to solve a problem that by its very nature requires disruption to achieve its promise?
Hey, I got your curves right here!
There are these effort vs. performance curves that you probably have seen at one point or another. Here's one example:
These curves show that the jump in performance of a new technology is detrimental to the early adopters, and then grows rapidly beyond the status quo to drive greater performance. With cloud, the good news is we are now getting beyond those early adopters. There are a lot of success stories where smart IT pros have applied the disruptive technologies to their businesses and were wildly successful - from the well known Amazon use cases, to even our own customers. I would argue we are approaching the point of crossover. People can adopt the disruptions and immediately gain efficiency and advantage now, so why aren't they?
First, I think disruptive technology is hard to sort out from the noise. We have all sorts of "cloud washing" going on, and the market is very loud with stuff that touts the status quo...now with cloud! (As if disruption is a feature you can add.)
Second, economics are a factor. You need to have the right cost models, the right services, and be able to sell services affordably. And, usually, licensing, cost structures, payment models - these are all designed to support the old technologies and models. So, you need to figure this one out too, and get the cost structures under control across your service offerings.
Third, as an MSP, your customers are your life. Let's say you see a disruptive technology, you make the economics work, and now you need to get your customers on board with it. You have to convince them that the old way of doing things is not right, that the basis of their IT plans is, perhaps, in need of rethinking and overhaul. While it can be done, it usually requires some sort of enterprise driving force to make the change, and that is just not so easy to find.
Finally, disruption is uncomfortable, some might even call that discomfort "risky." Even if you can see it, and you believe it, are you willing to bet your business on it? It usually takes a lot of courage to try something that you are not familiar with, and many disruptions sound absolutely crazy. I mean, seriously, SERVERS on demand over the internet? That will never work. This is why larger companies are often not good at creating disruptions because their momentum is along the existing technology lines.
Can You Afford Not to Go First?
If you buy into the old way of thinking about these concepts, then you won't move to a disruptive technology - you may not even consider one. You won't take the risk, bend the industry to your will, and adopt the new models. This also means that you won't define the impact of these disruptions and won't get your advantages built into the economics of the industry. So, if you don't get any of that, how can you possibly hope to compete? Survive, maybe, but thrive? Probably not. Business moves fast, the cloud market is moving faster. Customers have adopted disruptive technology successfully and are defining the industry. Can you really afford to NOT be a disruptor?