The new generation IT provider - our view of the future

What is the future of the IT industry?

Per Liljenberg, partner and sales manager at WeSafe:

A traditional supplier is often responsible for operational services, hosting, hardware and licenses for the customer. As an IT supplier, the role is then mainly focused on operations - making sure everything works. The traditional business is declining sharply as a result of the rise of cloud services, where traditional operational services are already included and become merely a "hygiene factor". Therefore, a completely new type of partnership is required, where the business is in focus and the technology is secondary.

So what does it take to succeed as an IT provider in the customer relationship of the future?

Peter Fritzon, co-owner and CEO of WeSafe:

- As a customer, you will instead need an IT partner who has in-depth knowledge of the relevant services linked to the customer's needs and objectives. The IT partner must get to know you as a customer, your processes and goals, in order to match your company's individual business needs with the services available. Most businesses cannot keep the right kind of skills in-house. This requires a close partnership with a supplier who understands your interests and ensures that you as a customer use the technology correctly to get the maximum business benefit.

What prevents IT providers from offering this type of partnership?

Martin Liljenberg, co-owner, technology and development manager at WeSafe:

- Many players in the IT industry, who are not born in the cloud but think more traditionally, try to protect the old by continuing to build their own solutions - just as they have always done. But I find it hard to believe that an IT company can survive with that culture because not using the major cloud services will hinder the customer's development. The pace of development can never be as fast for suppliers who put together their own solutions.

Instead, the supplier must be able to add value to the customer in a different way than before. Whatever a customer's needs are today, it can almost be assumed that there is a service in the cloud platform with the required functions. For the IT partner, the work becomes more a question of being able to translate the wishes into functions and then implement them - not create them from scratch. The IT provider of the future will support cloud development and follow it, instead of creating their own alternative development paths.

And what is the difference for the customer in relation to the IT provider?

Peter Fritzon, again:

The tools and applications of the future will be developed based on the cloud and the technology will be largely taken care of by the cloud platform you choose. Instead of treating IT as a standalone function focused on technology and operations, you need to steer IT operations towards the overall goals of the company. This creates the conditions for IT to move from being reactive to becoming a proactive driver that realizes new business opportunities. The rapid development and constant roll-out of new services and functions offered by cloud platforms will place high demands on the business. There must be a plan for how all these services are identified and evaluated in order to implement the services that add the most value and competitiveness. To succeed in this, there can no longer be pure IT projects - only business projects where the business and business managers must be involved in decisions about IT to ensure that they are driven by business objectives. Companies that are satisfied with IT "working" will find it increasingly difficult to keep up as competitors solve the equation of reallocating time and money from operations to innovation.