Why flexibility is crucial for modern IT management

The role of IT management isn't what it used to be. As business technology continues to evolve more rapidly by the year, the responsibilities of IT managers are constantly in motion. 

One month, IT managers may find themselves setting up standardized computers and hardwares for an office, only to shift to creating work-from-home ecosystems and decentralizing their IT infrastructure the next.

The crux of IT management in the modern age is the capability to respond to changes on a whim. Because our technology has advanced to a point of high plasticity and versatility, businesses are more equipped than they've ever been to make major infrastructural changes.

For example, a business can take on more staff knowing that it won't necessarily entail drastic changes to their IT infrastructure. Consequently, they can downscale their operations or switch to a new solution without having to sell hardware or worry about loss on one-time software purchases.

The way that modern businesses relate to technology is extremely agile, and as such, IT managers are expected to be quick on their feet. The most crucial asset for any IT manager today is flexibility; the ability to make significant changes on short notice.

For this reason, businesses are adopting software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions at an unprecedented rate - whether it be for their internal workplace emails, storage and documentation with services like Office 365, or for their infrastructure and external product delivery through platforms such as Amazon Web Services or Google Cloud. 

How does SaaS enable flexibility?

The size of the SaaS industry has increased by about 500% over seven years, and is widely considered to be the most important form of tech in business. 

This is largely thanks to the ability of SaaS to provide dynamic solutions to organizations of varying sizes and industries, and enable said organizations to easily pivot their tech usage according to their needs.

For example, imagine your company takes on a new, major engagement with a client and in order to achieve the outlined deliverables, needs to hire new developers, new support operants and someone to fulfill the role of account manager. The new engagement also requires existing assets, such as internal systems and knowledgebase articles to be accessed by the new employees in a way that your organization isn't currently structured for.

Furthermore, the engagement requires an online access portal for the new client that will consume more resources than your current web server allows.

Years ago, these changes would have required that the IT manager purchases a range of new, individual software licenses, sets up a range of personalized workstations, potentially restructures the internal knowledgebase system and potentially purchases new hosting hardware for the online portion of the project. 

Today, however, SaaS platforms enable all of these changes to be initiated with a few minor adjustments and clicks. 

Any new application setups are as simple as creating new users in the SaaS environment, such as GitHub, Salesforce, Office 365, Google Workplace, Slack or otherwise. 

Internal resources and knowledge base content, rather than being restructured or delivered to new employees in individual pieces, can be accessed via a central cloud platform with specified permissions and user groups according to staff needs. 

And as for any hosting changes, the vast majority of businesses run their websites via SaaS or IaaS solutions in platforms like Amazon Web Services, and can increase any required resources by simply adjusting their billing structure. 

A breakdown of SaaS flexibility in action

To illustrate the point more concisely, SaaS flexibility can be categorized by several key areas. Namely, consumption flexibility, expansion flexibility, administrative flexibility, budgetary flexibility, integrative flexibility and finally, managerial flexibility.

• Consumption flexibility: The ability to add or remove users, licenses and computing resources to a SaaS environment as needed. Rather than being locked into fixed contracts or permanent licensing, SaaS flexibility enables use or "consumption" of a SaaS environment according to your needs.

• Expansion flexibility: Similarly to consumption flexibility, this refers to the ability to grow your SaaS as needed, and employ a dynamic selection of SaaS features and capabilities according to the activity of your organization. For example, most Slack environments start out purely for workplace chat and file-sharing purposes, but grow to incorporate a multitude of custom features and integrations according to need. In the process, many smaller companies can start out on a Free or Pro package, and gradually upgrade their pricing module as needed.

• Administrative Flexibility: This refers to the ability to manage multiple IT resources via a centralized location, such as Office 365, Google Workplace or otherwise. SaaS solutions enable IT Managers to oversee and administer a larrge portion of IT resources from a central environment, such as web hosting resources from Azure or AWS, or internal resources via Confluence or Google Drive. This enables flexibility in that IT managers are able to enact significant changes with administrative ease and a sense of cohesion, thus enabling quick allocation and adjustment of resources without the need for lengthy administrative processes.

• Budgetary Flexibility: SaaS services enable IT Managers to forecast their budgetary requirements and optimize their spending. Due to the pay-as-you-go and pay-as-you-need nature of SaaS solutions, IT Managers can confidently attribute the precise financial requirements of staff, and can avoid excess spending on dormant software licenses or hardware.

• Integrative Flexibility: Before SaaS, if you required a specified function out of an app that isn't offered, you would have had to forego your requirements or look for an entirely different solution. Today, SaaS solutions are highly integrative and compatible with other apps, enabling extremely customisable solutions through the act of combining multiple SaaS applications.

• Managerial Flexibility: Finally, SaaS solutions typically offer automated an in-depth metrics regarding usage, forecasting, budgeting and general insights. By taking a lot of the legwork out of measuring the impact of internal resources, IT managers and staff in general can engage a deeper understanding of their tech, and plan their business activities accordingly. 

Modern IT management is largely integrated with SaaS management - if you aren't optimizing your SaaS usage, you aren't optimizing your workplace. 

While the initial pivot to SaaS can be an involved process, the flexibility and managerial power that SaaS provides will save countless resources in the long run.