Why Do Companies Still Go in House for Complex IT Projects?

When it comes to implementing complex, IT based solutions, many IT departments insist on creating and managing the project in-house. Whether the reasoning is control (results for an in-house solution are completely in control of the organization), ego (lifelong IT professionals believe they can, and want to, be able to handle any project that comes their way), overconfidence (belief that implementation of a project cannot be particularly difficult), organizations still grapple with the in-house vs cloud vendor debate.

While increased control and accountability are attractive and seductive qualities, the complications of implementing complex cloud solutions for an internal environment are many.

The cloud solution is created by a vendor, whose spent years developing a solution for a specific problem. This means that the cloud vendor has implemented a myriad of bells, whistles, and even horns that the internal IT department was never aware of. Further, the hands on experience of the cloud vendor’s customer’s means that real feedback, real problems, and real solutions have molded the solution to fit the real world. While the IT team may have exceptional talent and mapping-planning abilities, there is simply no answer to real-world experience. And this advantage does not stop upon implementation- as continued usage by dozens, hundred, or thousands of customers will continue to mold the solution to the changing business environment.

As Charlie Burns at Saugatuck Technology found in a study:

“Cloud IT infrastructure offerings can yield significant cost reductions for various types and sizes of workloads.
But the reality of such savings is highly dependent upon the type of workload, its suitability to cloud,
and the level(s) of efficiency and optimization of in-house IT resources and operations,”

And exactly what types are better managed by the cloud vendor?

Complex ones, Burns finds.

“The central theme of Saugatuck’s newest research — that optimized in-house IT is better for static operations and the
cloud is a better deal for dynamic workloads — is backed up by other major research firms as well.”