The following is a reprint of an article by Anteris' CEO, Tobias Casey that was originally published in Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen's newsletter, Strategy & Innovation.
In 1997, I was anything but an accomplished business executive. I was just getting started. After a home-schooled up-bringing, I quickly followed my emerging techno-geek impulses right into a clerk’s position at a Radio Shack, close to home in my native Berkshires. This assignment provided me with proximity to computer and electronics sales, and gave me the opportunity to talk with others about it. Not bad, I felt.
Something else not bad was happening in 1997. Moore’s Law—named after integrated circuit pioneer Gordon Moore and expressed succinctly as (circuits per chip)= 2(year-1975)/1.5 had been operating almost invisibly to most of its beneficiaries for 22 years, charting a communications and networking revolution that had already reshaped the world. And it, too, was just getting started.
Also in 1997, Harvard Business School Press published The Innovator’s Dilemma, by Clayton Christensen. Dubbed “lucid, analytical—and scary” by Intel’s Andy Grove, I would find the realities described by Professor Christensen in his new bestseller as lucid, analytical—and exhilarating.
In that same year, all of these factors and movements were being transcendently described by technology prophet George Gilder, who had just opened a research and publishing venture in Housatonic, MA, only a few miles from my sales perch at Radio Shack.
In a figurative nano-second, I was happily employed by Gilder as a web technician, with doors of opportunity opening in rapid succession, allowing me access to the epicenter of that era’s innovation and disruption discussions and developments.
In a progression almost too good to be true, Gilder, Christensen, Carver Mead, Bob Metcalfe, Eric Schmidt, Bill Joy, Ray Kurzweil, Steve Forbes—and I—were gathering regularly at leading-edge conferences and networking events.
By 2000, Clayton Christensen’s work had expanded and led to the launch of Innosight (publisher of Strategy & Innovation), where I served as the first CIO and CTO.
I was privileged and blessed to be in the company of revolutionary minds at a revolutionary moment, and during those days I was also forming a vision that synthesized the dynamics of innovation with the power of the network.
My idea was—and is—very simple: harnessing the capabilities of networked computing technologies, which continue to improve in power and decrease in cost, it is possible to increase the efficiencies and decrease the costs of virtually any company, if that company counter intuitively relinquishes control of one of its essential internal operations, information technology(IT).
On this premise I founded Anteris Solutions with a vision to enhance the business success of small and mid-size businesses by providing them with what they generally can’t or won’t provide for themselves—easy, low-cost, effective, but externally controlled IT.
Externally controlled IT is, to echo Andy Grove, “scary” for many companies whose decision makers are more comfortable with a more traditional, more cumbersome, more expensive, and less flexible IT approach. Companies choosing traditional, sustaining IT don’t call it cumbersome, inflexible, and expensive, but that’s what it is.
On one hand, traditional IT operations rely almost exclusively on on-site staffing, often hiring more personnel and buying more hardware than required, at significantly greater-than-necessary expense.
On the other hand, traditional IT consulting agreements signed by busy managers typically mandate opaque billing procedures based on “blocks” of time that the consultant is perversely encouraged to expend, which erodes efficiency along with the client’s budget.
This combination of conditions created the climate for the emergence of the second-generation Managed Service Provider(2G MSP), which overcomes and displaces the innate inefficiencies and excessive expenses of both of the traditional IT approaches. 2G MSPs disrupt traditional IT, and cause discomfort for its proponents. Anteris is a 2G MSP.
But 2G MSPs also allow small-to-medium sized businesses (SMBs of 10 to 200 seats) to be as nimble, networked, connected, and successful as any competitor, anywhere, by introducing the three critical efficiencies of the information age:
Cost efficiency—Every SMB can now afford a climate-controlled, fully secure server room housing the networking gear required for successful business communications, at a lower cost than the typical employment cost of a one-person IT staff, or traditional IT outsourcing and consulting contracts.
Time efficiency—2G MSP capabilities not only reduce on-site IT staffing and purchasing by up to 90 percent, but simultaneously allow for real-time, all-the-time optimal IT monitoring, troubleshooting, and updating, freeing company leaders and team members to pursue the essential mission of their venture—increasing productivity and profitability.
Spatial efficiency—Because the cost and time efficiencies are executed by 2G MSPs remotely, geographical considerations are eliminated. Networking, collaborating, and delivering results to New York, Boston, Singapore, or Bangalore from the Berkshires is seamless. Riding on these efficiencies, SMB scan thrive in far-flung locales.
The new capabilities created by new-generation MSP technologies, in keeping with the trajectory of Moore’s Law and technological disruption, are transformative, equipping companies to emphasize their unique strengths.
SMBs have traditionally been considered way too small for outsourced IT. And our experience is that most SMBs will replace their internal IT function only with a trusted partner where backups, policy, and procedure are concerned.
Anteris is successful because our product is not only “good enough” for these companies, but we are also considered a trusted partner. And we are consciously formulating processes around a more custom approach than the sustainers, such as Dell, Infosys, and WiPro, are inclined to or capable of.
And while bigger players like Dell will have to fight their way down-market to service the SMB sector, Anteris is already there naturally, focused on providing services that are more responsive, redundant, and accountable than an in-house IT staff can provide.
I didn’t know these things when I joined forces with Gilder and Christensen. But the more I saw, the more convinced I became that the first IT revolution—the one made possible by the advent of the integrated circuit—would lead to another IT revolution.
And so it did. In this new IT revolution, 2G MSPs make it easy for any company to travel at high speed on the global highway of commerce by doing precisely what doesn’t seem advisable—by losing control and allowing an agent to run and maintain its IT infrastructure.
And the beauty is that 2G MSPs are positioned to rapidly change in a rapidly morphing technology landscape, which allows client companies to do the same, without missing an opportunity or spending an unnecessary dollar.
