InsightaaS: Scott Lowe of Wikibon, the open source community of world-leading storage analysts, has published a piece looking at how the “build vs. buy” question that typifies software initiatives is increasingly relevant to hardware, as CIOs evaluate cloud-based options that move the centre of the debate beyond “data center infrastructure” to “business technology platforms.”
When it’s come to software, for years, CIOs have had to make a critical determination:
- Is there an existing product on the market that can meet the identified business need?
- Is there an existing product on the market that I can customize to meet my need?
- Do I have to develop software to meet the identified business need?
In other words, there has been a constant build vs. buy decision being made. In general, people favor a path of least resistance in these kinds of decisions, so, whenever possible, buying an “off the shelf” tool is generally the preferred option. Over time, the first two options have crowded out the third as solution providers create new and compelling services intended to fill customer desires. Sure, in some cases, there are unique needs that require ground-up software development efforts, but more often than not, it’s possible to simply customize an existing product to meet business needs…
Read the entire post: http://wikibon.org/blog/for-cios-build-vs-buy-isnt-just-for-software-anymore/
