Future of Work = Golden Age of IT

We’re living in a new world. 

To call these unprecedented times is an obvious understatement. Everyone has been impacted in some way. Some are temporarily impacted; others unfortunately have had their lives permanently altered (sometimes tragically so). Social distancing in response to COVID-19—essential to “flatten the curve” and save lives—has resulted in the single largest global economic shock of our lifetime as many economies have effectively “closed.” Unfortunately, we’ll feel the effects for some time.

How business is conducted will also be permanently altered. Being under lockdown for the last month has given me more time than usual to reflect on everything that’s happening in the world. I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about what this will mean for BetterCloud, our customers, our business, and the market as a whole. I’d like to share some thoughts on that. 

To sum it up, the future of work is finally here for everyone. Every company in the world has been forced to change how they work, adopt a new set of applications, and acknowledge the importance of their IT teams. And we’re not going to look back.

These inflection points have validated SaaS along the way

My entire career, which started in 2004, has been in SaaS. It was before people were even using the terms “SaaS” or “cloud.” It’s crazy to think that I was championing SaaS at a time when most businesses had DSL or T1 to connect to the internet. 

Throughout my career, there have been specific companies, products, and moments that stick out as inflection points validating this new way of working. 

2004 (Rise of Salesforce): Talk about trailblazers. Remember Salesforce’s tagline? It was “No Software.” They were pure SaaS. When Salesforce IPOed and became a recognizable company, it was a major inflection point for proving that SaaS was a viable business solution. In many ways, Salesforce invented the category.

2007 (Rise of Google Apps): Google Apps, or G Suite as it’s called now, transformed the way people worked. As an example, being able to collaborate simultaneously, in real time, was mind blowing to everyone. Up until that point, people were revising files and sending them as email attachments back and forth (v1, v2, v3, v4_final, v5_final_final, etc.). Now, using SaaS wasn’t just about cost savings anymore. It was about working better.

2011 (Launch of Office 365): Microsoft’s entrance into the SaaS space with O365 was when we all knew SaaS was going to cross the chasm. A few years later, when Satya Nadella became the CEO and ushered in a “cloud-first” mentality, it became clear their change of heart would be a turning point for cloud adoption. They knew the whole world would be running on SaaS eventually. 

2019 (Best-of-breed is here to stay): Slack went public in 2019. So did Zoom. These tools, which were traditionally bottoms-up, became legitimized when they IPOed—signaling that best-of-breed was here to stay. Keep in mind, the suites offered by Google and Microsoft also provide the same functionality. But companies still opt to use Slack and Zoom, rather than the products bundled into their cloud office suites, because the functionality is superior or their users prefer it. 

2020 (Move to remote work due to COVID-19): The massive move to remote work this year has been a watershed moment for SaaS adoption. It’s the biggest catalyst, ever, for changing how people work. To me, it’s 5X any of the previous catalysts. What’s happening right now will prove to be the tipping point for SaaS adoption in the enterprise. 

For those adopting SaaS now, there’s no going back

Unfortunately, how this acceleration to the cloud happened isn’t what anyone would like to see happen. But for any laggards, for anyone who’s resisted SaaS up until now, they’ve been pushed over the precipice.  

Since I started BetterCloud more than 8 years ago, enterprise IT leaders have given me every excuse in the book for why they were delaying the move to SaaS. It happens for a lot of reasons. It’s inertia that’s built up over decades, reluctance to take risks and change the status quo, security requirements created for a legacy environment, job security for the IT leaders, the list goes on.

But now we’re seeing these companies rushing to SaaS. I’ve heard of many companies (shared by company executives in confidence) bypassing security and procurement processes because they need to enable their workforce ASAP. The WFH business continuity crisis has forced behavioral changes among workers as well: We’re hearing IT teams describe how previously resistant employees are now embracing new technologies. One executive described how this acceleration of digital transformation has condensed years of behavioral change into mere weeks. There’s no going back to the legacy ways of working now.

With COVID-19, this new normal has created a very visible divide. There are the organizations that went through digital transformation before COVID-19, and those that didn’t. The ones who did are enjoying a clear competitive advantage now; their employees can remain productive while working remotely. The ones who didn’t are scrambling and have endured major productivity impacts from many accounts. 

This tipping point means the golden age of IT is here

This is now truly the golden age of IT. 

Now, more than ever, companies are leaning on IT. They’re depending on them to lead digital strategy, to protect data from afar. IT is empowered to enable productivity in a way that's never existed before. 

This has been true at some companies for a while, but now it’s true everywhere (or will be soon). CEOs who haven’t given their IT teams a seat at the table will now need to. 

This has been a longstanding belief of ours; we’ve been writing about this forever. I’ve actually been saying “the golden age of IT is here” since 2016. Maybe I was naive to say this so early on, but we knew it long before anyone else. Because of our customers, we were ahead of the curve. 

My team and I have worked with trailblazing companies and IT leaders for more than 8 years now. This isn’t new for them. They’ve seen the importance of elevating IT’s role. They know IT isn’t a cost center—IT is at the forefront of business transformation, driving innovation, enabling collaboration and growth, and planning for cloud success. And now, finally, it’s time for the whole world to see and appreciate this too. It just took a while to get here.

During a time like this, CIOs and other IT professionals who have experience with digital transformation are going to be hot commodities.

The SaaSOps movement is more relevant than ever

On a similar note, people are finally realizing that the SaaSOps movement is coming into play now. We’re finding that the topic of SaaSOps, and the capabilities we offer, are top of mind for the most senior IT leaders. They are lacking visibility, auditability, and control of the very collaboration and productivity suites they just rolled out to enable WFH. Solving this is key. It’s the stitching that makes SaaS adoption successful. 

(If you want to learn more, you can watch my recent Oktane20 Live session on SaaSOps.)

I have more executive one-on-one meetings in the next few weeks to discuss SaaSOps than I’ve ever had before. Now CIOs all have one thing on their minds: How do I enable my team to be productive and secure while working remotely using a best-of-breed SaaS stack? 

They’re hungry for these answers. They want to learn what problems they have to get ahead of. They want to make sure they’re securing their data in these SaaS apps while empowering people to collaborate.

Fittingly, that’s exactly what SaaSOps is. We’ve been talking about this topic, in some way, shape, or form, for 8 years now.

Our customers are SaaSOps leaders. They’re the SaaS experts, the trailblazers, the critical factor making companies run today. 

What’s the impact of this acceleration to the cloud?

• We’re going to finally cross the chasm (catapult across it!), which is what we’ve been waiting 8 and a half years for. What BetterCloud does has always been important to the organizations who get it, but now it’s going to be topical, relevant, and a priority for the vast majority of IT leaders. 
• IT has to do more with less, at least for now. The customers we do have are relying on our automation to get them through these times and do mission-critical work. A few of the IT teams we work with have already been hit by layoffs, so the remaining teammates are being asked to do more with less. Recently, people are most interested in offboarding and insider threat protection. We’re seeing more and more customers reach out to their customer success managers asking for help to create more automated policies in those two areas.
• For children today, using cloud technology will be second nature. I have two sons, who are 6 and 4. They’re having classes and friends’ birthday parties over Zoom (and they’re even familiar with “Zoom etiquette”). Older kids are using Google Classroom. Here at BetterCloud, many parents have purchased Chromebooks so their children can have their own devices for remote learning. Young children right now are growing up in the cloud, and it’s going to become the norm for them. In fact, 8 years ago, I wrote an article for Mashable called Growing Up Google: How Cloud Computing Is Changing a Generation. It’s the same idea, but accelerated even more today. 
• Over the coming months, we’ll most likely experience the fastest pace of change to workplace technology ever in history. We’re going to see more organizations relying on SaaS, especially the larger ones. And in turn, they’ll need modern IT leaders to help them navigate this new way of working. 

Legacy enterprises need to start hiring SaaSOps professionals. We’re here to help connect you to each other

I’ve been seeing more and more layoffs pop up in my LinkedIn feed, and unfortunately, there are SaaSOps pros out there who’ve been impacted.

We’re ready to help. 

To the enterprises who are new to SaaS: Now is the time to scoop up these SaaSOps leaders and infuse new blood into your IT org. It’s time for a changing of the guards. You’ll need them to navigate the SaaS management learning curve:  

If you’re just adopting SaaS right now, you’re in the “Blissfully Unaware” stage. In a normal world, you could afford to spend years navigating this learning curve. But in today’s economic climate, you simply don’t have that luxury. 

Our customers, who’ve been managing and securing SaaS for years, are sitting at the “Mastery Achieved” stage. These SaaSOps pros have already beat the curve. They know what challenges to expect (and how to solve them), how to see around the blind spots, how to architect new solutions using SaaS, how to scale with SaaS, how to enable productivity and reduce friction. If you’re an enterprise CIO, CEO, board member, etc. undergoing transformation now, you should be looking for these types of people and adding them to your teams right now. They’re going to be in high demand. 

Very soon we’ll be launching a program highlighting a collection of these “free agents,” featuring their SaaS expertise and career experiences. Our hope is that we can connect SaaSOps talent with the very people who need their skills the most now. Stay tuned. Until then: 

• Join BetterIT, our Slack community, and connect with thousands of modern IT professionals. In the #job-openings channel, you can post and browse job openings. I also recommend checking out the #remote-it channel, where you’ll find discussion on how IT is adapting to the new normal.
• Request a free copy of The Leader’s Guide to SaaSOps: How to Secure Your SaaS Applications. This is my second book, and it’s a collection of tactics and best practices for anyone looking to secure their SaaS environment (while also enabling productivity). By writing it, I wanted to present what I’ve been hearing from hundreds of IT pros and share it with others. Just email editor@bettercloud.com and we’ll make sure you get a copy.
• If you’ve found yourself thrust into a SaaS-powered workplace, and you’re looking to hire a SaaSOps professional, please reach out to me. Likewise, if you’ve recently been laid off and want an introduction, please reach out to me. We want to be here to match you up and help out, however we can, during this time. #InThisTogether

It’s amazing to see how fast the IT world is shifting. Many companies have been plunged into a new way of working, but the silver lining is the employee experience, productivity, collaboration, and agility that will come to life for the trailblazers and laggards alike. If what I’ve described is part of your company’s own evolution, then I encourage you to join us in this SaaSOps movement.