By Mike King
A recent story from SaaS company Nasstar predicted that IT departments would disappear by 2013. Hats off to them I thought, they’ve come up with a decent angle to ensure good pick up of the story in the IT press. And it worked – I’ve already seen the story picked up by PC Pro, Computer World UK and Computer Weekly, and I’m sure there’ll be more to come.
Of course, as a SaaS company, you’d expect Nasstar to be telling everybody that the need for on-site IT will disappear and in five years time, users will all logon to the internet for everything they need. But even so, a good solid example of effective PR.
However, back in the real world, the thing that detracts from their argument is the claim that there is far less that can go wrong with hosted rather than on-premises IT.
From my experience, finding a company that can provide a consistently reliable email system is nigh on impossible so the thought of relying on external service providers for every business critical application is unlikely to catch on any time soon. Apart from anything else, at least if there’s a problem in your own environment you can get on and fix it. Service providers, on the other hand, are past masters at passing the buck.
A fundamental shift in the attitude of service providers and a massive improvement in the reliability and performance of the whole broadband infrastructure needs to happen first. I don’t doubt that it’s coming, but those things aren’t quick to fix. Five years? Really?
So, nice story – but I just don’t believe it.
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