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As the world continues to change around us, businesses that can pivot quickly to solve new problems without excess lead time will be the ones to survive and succeed. We think this need for efficiency and rapid innovation is going to change how tech solutions are delivered and implemented. Specifically, products that require slow, costly implementation processes will be displaced by tools that can be deployed more efficiently, reducing the lag time from purchase to value generation.
Improvements in technology should empower business leaders to choose and implement highly specialized solutions with little or no intervention from technical product experts, bringing costs down along the way. Here’s more on how we think expectations around implementation and related costs are evolving.
Implementation as Part of TCO
Especially as budgets tighten in response to broader economic uncertainty, businesses will need to consider a solution’s implementation process as part of its total cost. In most situations, the time and attention required to get a product functioning and fully integrated with its environment could be better invested elsewhere. Great tools will differentiate themselves by their ability to provide immediate value rather than requiring a slow ramp-up.
Right now, it’s still common for a new solution’s rollout to require coordinated teamwork and project management over a period of weeks or months. If the ultimate goal in purchasing that tool is to increase efficiency and automate annoying tasks, we may look back someday and see all that up-front implementation labor — for products we’re already paying for — as counterproductive.
The End of On-Prem Implementations
Some of the most common solutions that require heavy implementation come in the form of on-prem hardware — servers, network infrastructure, etc. The process of replacing or upgrading a component that has reached its end of life can be painful. Your IT team or external service provider may need to spend weeks untangling a web of existing data, settings, and integrations before removing existing hardware, safely installing a new solution, and testing and monitoring it to work out any kinks. This amounts to an expensive use of expertise for what ought to be a mundane job.
Instead, cloud technology is replacing complicated on-prem installs, and the as-a-Service pricing model is helping IT departments better forecast their budgets by converting large one-off capital expenditures into smaller, more consistent operational expenditures.
Eliminating Vendor Lock-In
Heavy implementation services also go hand-in-hand with long-term contracts and commitments to individual vendors. As better alternatives emerge, businesses won’t want to be locked into solutions that require product-specific training and expertise or extended vendor service packages. These requirements increase cost, lead times, and risk, and prevent capable employees from implementing, troubleshooting, and customizing tools as needed.
Future tech solutions will instead be more open, with robust APIs and integration points available to the growing number of developers in the workforce. Instead of training to become certified experts in a single product area, we might see IT pros using broader skill sets to assemble creative combinations of solutions that better match each unique organization. And with more people enabled to work on a solution, businesses will gain flexibility and reduce the risk of being left in the dark if their resident expert in a given product leaves.
Additionally, modern tech tools will be designed to fit with whatever already exists in a business’s IT environment. They’ll avoid the risks of relying on vendor compatibility, where one vendor’s shift in priority can leave another’s product unsupported and unable to function as intended in certain environments.
Impacts of Modernized Implementation
This modernized approach to rapid implementation will allow tech products to deliver more value on shorter time cycles. It’ll help to eliminate cumbersome administrative work, allowing greater focus on the kinds of high-impact, creative projects that drive business forward. And as remote work enables businesses to connect with a truly global talent pool, the reduction in unnecessary travel and site visits will help to reduce costs.
Here at JumpCloud, we see the shift away from intensive implementation processes as just one part of a larger trend in the modernization of IT, and ultimately, a transformation in what work means and how it’s done. We’re looking forward to a future where tech not only makes work more efficient, but helps employees stay focused on the projects and ideas they’re passionate about. Our piece of that puzzle involves securely connecting users to the variety of IT resources they use, with minimal implementation and administrative work required. Learn more about how our vision for the modern domainless enterprise fits into the future of work.
