End of enshITtification

I'm a psychic. Don't believe me? Let me show you.

Your company has a website. See, I told you. What? That's not enough? Alright, speed round.

Your company also has computers and a security system. At the office, you have a printer. You use a smartphone for work calls. You share documents as part of your work. You send and receive emails. Internet is for your business what blood circulation is for your body.

This is actually called "cold reading", not being a psychic. And in the IT industry, this seems to be the method we use to match the customers' needs to our products. Assumption instead of verification.

The problem

Your company is too small to justify hiring a CIO. You might think you are too small to even be a target for hackers. But the regulations don't care, and the automated bots that try to hack everything with a digital pulse also don't care. Google, when downranking your website due to security issues, doesn't care either.

So you are left with a tough decision. Either find someone to "fix IT" or buy a solution that is supposed to do it for you. Either way, you and your hard-earned cash will have to part ways.

But even if throwing money at the problem is the solution, how do you verify that the solution is actually working? Long ago, everyone had "the local IT guy". The nerd with a ponytail, glasses, and a bad attitude. But this species of humans, with their adjacent characters, have died out and been replaced by smooth-talking, silk-suit-wearing, slick salesmen.

Trust me, I'm not the first one to notice that change.

The reality

This issue is well known in the IT industry, and many salespeople build their whole careers on it. Selling products to customers who do not benefit from them. It's not a unique problem in the IT industry, but the solutions are.

IT is one of the very few industries where solutions change so rapidly that even IT professionals can't keep up. This means that an SMB leader or an accidental CIO has no chance whatsoever. And this is the reason "the local IT guy" is no more.

So instead of learning everything about whatever the sales guys are selling you this week, I'd argue you're better served by reframing the problem itself.

Your problem is a lot more important than the solution.

The solution

You don't need Outlook, you need an email service. Zoho, Gmail, or even Zone costs less and works better. Need an ISO 27001 implementation? No, you do not need a new software license.

What your business needs is a functioning set of working services. IT that just does what it's supposed to do. That's all.

I've had a career in IT, and I even ran the Managed Services department at one of the major EU IT enterprises. Now I run a small company. I know what it's like, and I'm pissed.

I won't tell you any revelations, I won't teach you everything about IT, but I will tell you how to differentiate a good sales pitch from a bad IT solution.

Consider this website as your local IT guy. Slightly less ponytail, same bad attitude.