Lean IT is becoming quite a trend these days among companies… and for a good reason. In the past, companies relied on the traditional form of IT to create and operate enterprise technology. Traditional IT focused on using internal resources to create needed technology, thereby not having to rely on outsourced companies to get the job done. In doing so, all IT tasks were budgeted within the company, and the entire IT department was comprised of skilled employees. This way, the only measurement of success and progress with IT departments was the basic creation and operation of this homemade in-house technology.
However, in high school economics class, we learn about absolute and comparative advantages. In essence, some people, companies, countries, etc., will be able to do things better than you can, a comparative advantage. And even if you perhaps have a comparative advantage in doing something over others, that doesn’t mean that you should continue to do it internally without considering outsourcing. In short, outsourcing some of your company activity elsewhere would let those who specialize in IT take care of you, letting you spend your time wisely producing things that you have an absolute advantage in.
That’s where lean IT comes in. File sharing services, like SmartFile, and cloud providers offer an advantage for companies wishing for an easier alternative to IT. By slimming IT down a bit and creating a multi-sourced environment in your organization, your company can focus on business performance and productivity rather than creating and operating technology with internal resources that could be used for bigger and better things.