Change is hard, as well as expensive. Surprises – sometimes costly ones – are the name of the game when you open up the Pandora’s box of IT upgrades. That hot new technology you’re about to pour thousands of dollars into might be buggy, defective, incompatible with applications and devices, or pose a security threat. Adding top-quality IT personnel is pricy, difficult, and time-consuming once you vet applications, run interviews, and deal with the HR hassles. If the technology you’ve got has managed to get you by so far, why not push it to keep on going so long as you can? Your business has managed to survive this long without always having the latest and greatest—and without having to pour much operating capital into an area that doesn’t have an obvious direct effect on your bottom line.

Where technology is concerned, standing still while the world changes around you may seem comfortable – but it’s pretty shortsighted. There are good reasons why leading companies make sizeable investments in making sure that their IT departments are technologically up-to-date and appropriately staffed – and a lot of them have to do with preventing problems rather than having to respond to them. IT investments now tend to head off problems later, whether they be in the form of system overloads, security threats, or just general underperformance and inefficiency. Agile, responsive companies need agile, responsive technology to match, and they know that in order to remain competitive in a world of increasing speed and shrinking margins, a reliable and high-performing information infrastructure delivers a powerful competitive advantage.