If you are a telecom agent, you have been in those meetings with the IT staff where the mere mention of cloud-based services causes the record to scratch and the glaring of IT eyes are upon you. This fundamental difference of opinion as to own or not to own (lease) is not a new one, but it has picked up considerable steam with the new discussions of moving things out of the IT realm and into the cloud.
I always have been of the opinion that the IT staff would survive whether IT is on premises or cloud-based, due to the evaluation and additional business efficiencies that need to be driven by IT. IT staffs are also in a bit of flux as they not only have to possess IT skills, but now have to be able to evaluate the business side of things as well, especially with the discussion around cloud-based services. The days of simply running a phone switch or being a network admin is becoming the way of the dinosaur. As an example, most midsize shops we work with have staffs of five to 10 and the IT guy is wearing multiple hats all day every day. With the shrinking of IT staffs and the outsourcing of IT resources and services, IT’s role has changed significantly in my opinion. More and more emphasis has been placed on finding efficiencies/reducing costs and reducing head count. Do more with less. To that end, cloud in my opinion is IT’s friend.
On the other hand, we have recently walked into accounts and found that the IT staff was far more interested in keeping its arms around all aspects of the IT enterprise. Two-thousand square feet of servers on-premises, discussion of home-grown Asterisk-based VoIP PBX … it came as no surprise these guys had no interest in hearing anything about moving services to the cloud. We shelved any education about cloud or why the cloud would be in their best interests, arguably because we didn’t have the ability to teach these individuals. In this case, we took up the discussion with finance (CFO) and let the chips fall where they may.
I can see that if your sole existence in an enterprise is managing the phone switch, discussions around hosted VoIP may be harmful to your long-term existence. However, even in this instance there is still going to be the need for someone to manage the infrastructure and perform MACDs. And, since you will be able to do that in less time, this will free you up to attack other aspects of enterprise IT and learn other skill sets.
At this point, there is no question that IT is morphing with the advent of cloud. The onus is upon the agent to educate IT staffs wherever and whenever possible to this fact. This endeavor is requires walking a fine line, but is the key to our success.
It’s my opinion that “the cloud” is IT’s friend in most cases. Regardless, the cloud is coming to a business near you. If a company’s IT staff and its telecom agent don’t embrace it, a business will find someone that will because it is compelling in so many ways. As agents, we are students of the cloud, but we will soon need to become teachers.
What are your thoughts on the “friend or foe” discussion? Do you have any thoughts on how we can educate and become better teachers of the cloud?