The Living Dead

MacBook Pro, white ceramic mug,and black smartphone on table

I am a computer engineer and a software developer. I did my undergraduate in software science, switched to computer science, completed my master in software engineering, worked in high-level liaising and strategic planning, and now manage independent software and software engineering companies. I currently have a staff in the financial sector and I thought I might attract like-minded business owners who are interested in outsourcing every aspect of their operations, including the IT department. I call this the “living dead”. Those people who want to move from one stage of evolution (meaning you’re never going to work here again) to there. So now, most clients I’ve had either have never worked for a large firm or are working for large companies already and want to switch.

For these people, I’m looking forward to a world where they don’t need to understand what IT does or even have the slightest clue about the IT industry or the internet or companies. They’re going to be doing it themselves from scratch and just drop into the dark, confusing and world of outsourcing to navigate without ever stopping for breath. So, I assume that it is in their best interest to meaningfully understand the value of technology. IT has made the world so much better, faster and cheaper I’m confident which is whyIT outsourcingis becoming the perfect solution for the “living dead”.

I know what you’re thinking, technology is not a silver bullet solution. But as in our lives, there is no inherent silver bullet for everything! I’m not trying to sell anybody anything – it’s not outsourcing that gets me from here to here. I’m about to show you what I do know, how I do it and what the results are. I’ve thought actively about this topic – I’m highly qualified on both IT and the ways of marketing and the most thing that I can say is that as a business owner of a software company, “It seems to me that the only choice we have is whether we want to run it ourselves and become completely subservient to our product, relying solely on it and risking our whole company, or whether we can decide to get help from a company where we manage our own people. The choice is the same. But we can always find help”.

Have you all identified the “living dead” yourself? What do you do to move them off of your list?

I have worked with several companies who have captive servers throughout the last 15 & a half years. They run their SaaS or software as a service from their own data centre, and they do not have the option to move to outsourced SaaS as long as they pay even one dollar more. This very common strategy is a disaster waiting to happen. Everything is created on an IT server, licensed and maintained by the same company, and using the same tools, resources and infrastructure. The only solution to take away the boundaries of this model are to take the hardware, network, software and people off-site (or move it in to a facility where it can runhouse software, but not in your own, and pay for resources on premise), as opposed to being purely outsourced. This may seem like a yes-and-forget, but since everything is so closely tied-up-with-IT, it really is hard to imagine the context and trust needed to operate such software-as-a-service.

I’ve seen some Clients who are dedicated to an on premise solution, but a client that was truly very happy with that solution has turned around and bought a managed service on-shore (North America, in an attempt to replicate the financial benefits). And then have taken control back by having all of their applications and data on-site. There are several commonalities on this list, one of which is outsourcing – they are still working toward:

There are several other implications of this article that I won’t even get into right now, but I want to point out something that I believe is important for every existing and would-be entrepreneur: outsourcing does not have to be a bad thing as long as the risk remains low and you aren’t locked into the delivery schedule. Personally, I’ve had a great amount of success with this strategy, and the time and money that I’ve spent have been very well worth it. If you have any interest in learning more, drop me an email and I can put together a free “solution” that might help. I’m not going to prove anything here, and if you don’t read the entire “living dead” article, just Google it and take the time to find out what you might learn more about.

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