What makes you distinct in your service offering? It can’t be the delivery of the best payroll package? It can’t be the best deployed word processing package? It could be how we take some building blocks and deploy them in a totally innovative way!
It used to be exciting in IT Services. It may still be exciting in Aberystwyth & Bangor where local software development was the model of service delivery for many years (one feels their geographic location had something to do with that however). Perhaps we’re approaching the dawn of a new age where open source code plus cloud computing apis plus most importantly widely available consumer mobile computing devices can be developed into innovative and differentiating service offerings.
Might it be possible that our IT Services departments return to their roots and develop and share code for mobile computing platforms that are then developed further by others into differentiating applications?
Think of it. The time is right. The economics point in this direction. The political agenda (shared services) points in this direction. The technological environment (viz. iPhones and SmartPhones) with application delivery platforms enables this. The move is towards the universal availabilty of consumer computing device and away from the corporate workstation BUT shared code development for these devices points towards a possible future.