A number of business theorists have explored the dimensions of market shifts that turn competitive advantage upside down. There are lots of ways to describe this phenomenon: The most contemporary is Clayton Christensen’s work on “disruptive technologies”—but if you go back further, you’ll hear the same arguments in Lester Thurow’s “punctuated equilibrium” and Thomas Kuhn’s “paradigm shifts.”
Whatever you call it, it’s unmistakable when it occurs, and it profoundly impacts the incumbency.
One incumbency in the midst of a major market disruption is enterprise IT. The disruptor? Public cloud services—specifically, Amazon EC2.
Why wait weeks or months when minutes will do?
That’s the question that’s forcing IT to transform service delivery from slow and centralized to fast and delegated.
It’s also creating a fair amount of angst in the IT ranks as leadership scrambles to make this transformation.
This cartoon tells the whole story:
“The King of No” is rapidly evolving from stereotype to anachronism.
“No” isn’t an acceptable answer when alternatives exist. IT organizations that aren’t taking this market disruption seriously should hang a sign on their wall as a simple reminder:
“Amazon can do it. Why can’t you?”
To me, that says it all.
