The Role Of Service Providers In Breaking The Stockholm Syndrome

I work with enterprise IT groups.  I also work with a growing cadre of enterprise-focused IT service providers.

And, occasionally, I spot an area where one group can help the other in a deep and very strategic way.

Running An Enterprise IT Group Is Hard Work

I meet with IT leaders on a regular basis.  You might think it's all about shamelessly pitching EMC products and services, but -- no -- you'd be wrong.

No, where I spend my time is in listening and sharing: listening to them and their challenges, and sharing what I see other people doing about similar problems.  Sure, the discussions frequently vector back to what EMC is doing -- that's to be expected -- but that's not the goal.

And one of the biggest challenges I'm hearing in certain IT organizations is what I call "overcoming the Stockholm Syndrome".

Where IT People Can Go Wrong

Imagine you're an Oracle administrator or architect in a large IT setting.  (Note: I'm not picking on Oracle, I'm using them as an example). You, the Oracle professional, have spent a good portion of your career getting really damn good at it.  You've gotten all the trainings and certifications.  You go to the various Oracle-sponsored events.  You read all the Oracle-related tech blogs and hang out in the Oracle-focused communities.

Inevitably, you spend a lot of time with the Oracle sales and technical teams.  You build personal and professional relationships with people like you who are similarly committed to the Oracle environment.

All good.  But then, things change.

The IT leadership thinks its time to move on to a different database strategy, and -- perhaps -- a different database vendor entirely.

All of the sudden, you feel very threatened.  All that work, all that investment, all that expertise -- now being challenged by a shift in strategy and business requirements.  This is serious stuff, from a personal and career perspective.

Who do you align with?  The organization that pays your bills, or the vendor that has essentially defined your professional career?

That -- in a nutshell -- is what I call the IT Stockholm Syndrome.

Let's be clear -- I'm not picking on Oracle, or Microsoft, or IBM, or HP, or any vendor in particular. 

IT people inevitably invest deeply in individual technologies and vendor offerings as a way to increase their value, not only for themselves, but the organizations they work for.  That's to be expected, isn't it?

The IT Leadership Challenge

Now, imagine you're an IT leader, chartered with making meaningful changes in the IT organization.  You weren't hired for a business-as-usual role.  You're the agent of change.

As you look through your IT organization and vendor affiliations, you realize that there are vendors who are motivated to help you transform, and those that are most definitely have a strong incentive to maintain the unproductive status quo.

To make matters worse, significant parts of your IT talent are essentially "Stockholm Syndrome" career hostages to particular vendors.  They've defined their entire value proposition -- indeed, sometimes their personal identity -- around some of the vendors you'd prefer to not work with going forward.

You're now faced with a thorny dilemna -- tactically, you need these people to run the as-is IT model, but -- at the same time -- you realize that you'll want far less of these people in the future model.

You'd go hire a bunch of people with the new skill sets -- and the new attitudes -- you need, but that isn't in the budget for the time being.  Not to mention being incredibly disruptive.  What to do?

And that's where the use of targeted service providers can be a boon ...

The Service Provider As The Pre-Fab IT Organization

Going back to our Oracle example, imagine a focused and trustworthy enterprise-focused IT service provider who had a demonstrated competency in the target database environment you'd prefer to move towards.

No need to invest heavily in new licenses, maintenance, or infrastructure to support it. 

No need to hire a plethora of experts who understand the new database technology. 

No need to seriously re-jigger internal processes around the new database platform. 

Start by pointing the new external service at less-than-critical workloads -- just to get a feel for things.

Start to consume as a service, and -- if it goes well -- consume more.  If it doesn't go well, you've minimized your exposure.  And, if it goes really, really well -- consider making the investment to bring that expertise in-house, if that's what you need.

With this scenario, you've positioned yourself perfectly -- you can move in the direction you'd like, with a minimum of internal stress and disruption.  Your investments -- and options -- are optimized.

Once again, I'm using databases and Oracle as an example, but we could be talking about almost anything in the IT environment where there's a strategic change indicated, and the internal team has essentially "gone native" against the change.

The Message For Service Providers

On my other blog, I frequently share with our service providers what enterprise IT leaders really want.  The enterprise-focused SP crowd is great to work with, but frequently hasn't spent a lot of time working directly with senior levels of IT organizations, so they're sometimes a bit fuzzy as to how things really work.

One of the areas I'm promoting to them is along these lines.  Sure, everyone needs to offer the usual enterprise choices as-a-service; there's a great market there.  No doubt.

But, at the same time, I'm also encouraging them to get ahead of the next platform that IT leadership will likely want to move to: that next-gen collaboration environment, that next-gen application development environment, that next-gen user experience environment, and so on.

So many SPs position themselves to do exactly what enterprise IT groups are doing today, only faster, better, more efficiently, etc. 

A few have figured out a far stronger position -- not only doing the usual, but also supporting the environment that IT leadership would like to get to, but can't for one reason or another.

And I think we'll see more of that before long :)

Comments

[Howard Marks]

Chuck,

Good thoughts here; but of course the Stockholm Syndrome applies to EMC as much as to Oracle, HP or IBM. Even more insidiously it applies to technologies as well.

Anyone that's invested the time and effort to learning how to implement a technology like Fibre Channel is going want to keep that technology around even if iSCSI and NFS have matured to the point where they'll do the job well enough for less. In fact that's one of the barriers to even FCoE adoption.

[mike workman]

Chuck -

I hadn't read Howard's comments when I read your blog - but I thought the same thing he did - EMC is proably one of the biggest companies holding people captive I have ever experieinced.

Seriously - your Salespeople understandably ridiculed and sold against companies like Data Domain, Isilon, Kaysha and others the day before you bought them. Part of the reason you bought these companies as we all know, is that their technology was superior to what had evolved within EMC. Not a criticism, just a fact. How did your Salespeople prevail so often against superior technology? You had Customers captive to your point. I know that the captives didn't always fall in love with their captors in EMC's case, but they were captives nonetheless.

I think Oracle is a great example of this, as an entire industry revolves around Oracle software that is at least as big as Oracle itself. People's careers indeed are made on their Oracle expertise. This too isn't necessarily bad, it is just a fact. But all this vested interest makes the customers captive by their service providers, employees, internal install base, and consultants as well as Oracle itself.

I agree with you wholeheartedly on the point of macro or strategic view versus tactical view. This is why at the Pillar Summit last week our discussions were all framed around where we are going, indeed where the Industry is going in our view. But this view, even if superior to EMC's, or resonant with Customer's needs doesn't make it any easier for people to unshackle themselves and escape their captors. Well maybe marginally so....

Perhaps I missed your point?

Mike

[Chuck Hollis]

Hi Mike

Funny how my thoughts on how service providers can help IT leaders have somehow turned into a rant against EMC in your hands ...

I would like to add one dimension to your observation: it's one thing to buy technology from a smaller startup, and another thing entirely to buy that same technology from a large, established company with a proven reputation for stability and support. If you don't believe me, talk to customers on that one.

In many cases, we have partnered with the company prior to acquisition, including many of the names you mentioned -- Greenplum being the latest.

The point still remains: the captivity effect is strong in our industry (regardless of vendor), and service providers can play a key role for IT leaders looking to make a change.

-- Chuck