Five things I’ve learned about the effects of COVID-19 on IT Organizations (A Customers Perspective) Part Three

“As I was writing this, I realized it was getting too long for a single blog post – so to keep it more readable decided to publish as a series.”

Table Of Contents

• 1. Find a business partner not a vendor (Value not Price)
• 2. Understand Supply Chain (be in tune with your partners business)
• You are Here -> 3. Explore XAAS Offering (as a service offerings)
• 4. Rethink your Architecture (evaluate your infrastructure)
• 5. Consolidate / Automate

3. Explore XAAS Offering (as a service offerings)

An interesting perspective of one customer was that his organization was exploring AAS offerings to address the (hopefully) temporary “burst” of resources needed for COVID-19. His example was that he set three very difficult directives for this pandemic:

1. Scale Infrastructure to address the additional Remote worker footprint
2. Avoid CAPEX purchases if at all possible.
3. If possible, find solutions that could be “spun down” when no longer needed.

While the perception of XAAS is that the cost is often greater than traditional on-premise solutions this approach was particularly intriguing to me for a few reasons.

Firstly, XAAS offered flexibility to burst as needed which would address current needs and it would provide a contingency plan should the situation worsen. In addition, especially in the case of SAAS, the offering works particularly well for remote workers and enable “work anywhere” strategies. Many organizations are realizing that (against popular belief) workers can be just as effective and efficient from home which greatly reduces real estate and utility costs and increases overall profitability.

Secondly, Most XAAS offerings have a term of one year and since the general consensus is that this situation will affect organizations until the end of the year, the timing bodes well for this strategy. A number of vendors (including my own) have created even shorter term (six months) offerings to help clients weather the temporary increased requirements from such projects as VDI and Remote Access.

Thirdly, as the situation improves he had flexibility to scale down resources gradually and with lest risk of the financial waste he might have seen with a large CAPEX purchase. The value of AAS is greatly increased during times of crisis because it allows organizations to only pay the premium during the temporary crisis and return it when its no longer needed creating much needed elasticity for bursts created by COVID.

A number of Vendors I have spoken to are offering creative solutions around shorter term XAAS to address the temporary shortfall of resources we are currently seeing so items one is even more important especially as many organization of all sizes are now exploring work from home options going forward.

Table Of Contents

• 1. Find a business partner not a vendor (Value not Price)
• 2. Understand Supply Chain (be in tune with your partners business)
• You are Here -> 3. Explore XAAS Offering (as a service offerings)
• 4. Rethink your Architecture (evaluate your infrastructure)
• 5. Consolidate / Automate