Thankful things

Thank you, Sir, may I have another?

— Kevin Bacon as “Chip” in Animal House

Since this is Thanksgiving time in the United States, I wanted to share with you my list of those IT things for which I am thankful:

• It is possible to work from just about anywhere. There are few remaining excuses that should prevent you from taking that well-deserved and long-deferred vacation. The key is being able to choose NOT to work from everywhere as well.
• There are fewer barriers to finding information. It’s easy these days to gather information on a potential vendor, partner or solution. The challenge has moved from finding information to digesting and synthesizing information to be relevant to your situation.
• Capex and opex are far more interchangeable than they ever were before. Long gone are the days where system refreshes were dependent on capital to find new hardware. Now, with hosted services and cloud computing, the need to buy a new physical server before being able to upgrade software is gone.
• It is possible for other people to work from just about anywhere. Finding the best person available to do a job is no longer a matter of finding the best person locally or of bringing in someone from another city or country. More and more it is possible to have the best talent available to you without having to bring the person to your location. Managing that dispersed workforce is another issue…
• Business people are more tech-savvy than ever. I admit this is a double-edged sword, with shadow IT and the consumerization of IT likely to cut you if you aren’t careful. But having business partners who understand the value of IT to the extent that they are willing to procure it themselves is much better than having them pine for the days of green-bar paper reports and manual T accounts.

What is on your thankful things list?