I had the pleasure today of spending some time with Acopia, a leading supplier of file virtualization solutions.  For those of you who haven’t lived and breathed storage for the past 20 years, suffice it to say that file virtualization brings a number of benefits to file-server and storage administrators, not the least of which is flexibility for the buyer.  Which brings me to opportunity.  

If we’ve learned anything over the last 300 years, it is that flexibility can be just as valuable as capability.  The Revolutionary War in the British colonies more than 200 years ago showed the benefit of flexibility over the much more capable British Regulars.  I flew back from Europe a few years ago sitting next to a NATO general, and we spoke at length regarding NATO’s re-engineering efforts, as they increased focus on flexibility.  Prior to the re-engineering efforts, no one would have doubted NATO’s capabilities, but certainly NATO’s flexibility could be called into question.

For entrepreneurs and inventors who are looking for opportunity, I highly recommend that you look for opportunities to unlock chains of inflexibility for companies that are trapped by current applications, systems or processes.  While I am a proponent of partnering with suppliers and a proponent of corporate standards to improve operational efficiency, virtually every supplier over the life of a corporation will fail their customers at least once, and occasionally in a way that is harmful to the customer’s business. And so, there is enormous value for a company to have flexibility in supplier selection. 

 For buyers of technology, before adopting any new technology, always remember to consider these two flexibility factors:

  1. What is the financial and operational impact, if the supplier or product ceases to exist?
  2. If your current supplier with whom you have entrusted your information, your applications, or your processes, ceases to perform to your satisfaction, how do you migrate back to your own environment or to another supplier?

While it may be a tactic of a procurement specialist to focus on the component prices of a solution, failure to consider these factors in a supplier selection process does a substantial disservice to the acquiring company.