The inevitable climb to the cloud is taking hold within IT circles, as the bells and whistles that come with cloud provision will see to it that that legacy versions of traditionally delivered titles are left to fall fallow under the all-encompassing term “end of life”.

And so we step forward with the behemoths of computing, entrusting to their expertise and reliability to ensure that our businesses are supported with as much verve and energy as any aspiring technical resolution team we could hire locally.

However, before we link arms and skip merrily down this yellow-brick road in search of the IT Wizard of Oz, we could do well to watch out for the flying monkeys that could befall this transition and leave the IT department with more questions to answer than when it had the capability to influence IMAC activities locally.

The labels and variations on as-a-service delivery are bountiful, but regardless of the model chosen the decision has been made to out-source some degree of IT provision to a third party. As such, that third party is taking on a responsibility to provide a service in return for a fee. And this brings me to the crux of the title:

If we are paying for a service, then why should we be paying for support and maintenance on top of that fee?

Granted, there are levels of service that could be attributed to such provision, but I wonder how many of us take the time to scrutinize the small print to ensure that the service provided (as a minimum) matches the SLAs that would have been placed on our own IT departments to address downtime, patching, roll outs and recycling of software and hardware?

As has been seen in the not too distant past, both Adobe and Microsoft experienced downtime with their cloud and infrastructure offerings with little to offer by way of remediation to the ire and anxiety felt by those companies that expected Creative Cloud and Azure to perform as well as on premise IT.

This is where we start to look at taking SAM into the strategic thinking of IT and the business – did those companies who complained bitterly have the option to return to their as-a-service contracts and instigate penalties for the downtime experienced? Did they accept the standard terms and conditions as provided by those software vendors?

Does paying for something you have not received strike you as good business?

If so, goodnight – sleep tight, and don’t let those flying monkeys bite! 😉

About the Author:

Rory Canavan | Owner of SAM Charter | Twitter | LinkedIn

With a technical background in business and systems analysis, Rory has a wide range of first-hand experience advising numerous companies and organisations on the best practices and principles pertaining to software asset management. This experience has been gained in both military and civil organisations, including the Royal Navy, Compaq, HP, the Federation Against Software Theft (FAST) and several software vendors.