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3 Tips for IT: Developing a Competitive Business Skill Set

As companies look to maintain a competitive advantage, IT professionals are increasingly being charged with adopting a business-focused mindset. The role of an IT manager is no longer simply ensuring that systems and networks are functioning properly – they now need to be adept at anticipating business needs and having a recommendation on how to address them.

As pressure comes from the C-suite to spend IT dollars wisely, IT professionals may find themselves needing to demonstrate their expertise by identifying and implementing virtualization and cloud tools that best fit their company's needs. Unless IT proactively forms a recommendation, they risk being entirely cut out of the conversation as vendors target business unit leaders directly.

IT professionals must understand where their companies are heading in order to be prepared and stay competitive. Here are some tips on what IT professionals can do to position themselves for success as their role in the organization continues to develop:

1. Stay Agile

IT professionals need to be comfortable interacting with all parts of the business. As their role in an organization moves beyond implementation, maintenance and troubleshooting to performing competitive analysis and issuing recommendations, it is important to stay on top of developments in the industry and what they mean for the business.

IT professionals should be up-to-speed on technologies like virtualization and cloud, which have become game-changers for IT. However not every application is suited for the cloud, and it’s important to have a core understanding of each and be able to make the distinction. Complicated, one-off custom apps may not be suited (or cost efficient) for a move to the cloud, whereas hosting high volume, repeatable apps in the cloud can help with standardization. The key is knowing which environment is appropriate and will best meet the needs of your business.

2. Carefully cultivate partnerships

IT professionals need to identify and collaborate with vendors who are making it easier to adopt features that both enhance virtualization and facilitate the transition to cloud computing.

Start experimenting early and often to understand what works for your organization and what doesn't. This will simplify the process for IT professionals whose companies are looking to move into a cloud infrastructure as you’ll already have a sense of which path to take. Another advantage is that this will demonstrate your ability to develop and manage vital partnerships that provide the right enhancement features for their companies' needs.

There will always be pressure from the C-suite to demonstrate that managing some services externally is both cost-effective and the best course of action for the organization, and understanding and anticipating internal business concerns will help you work with vendor partners to address them.

3. Become a successful business leader, from the server room to the board room

This is the defining piece. IT professionals need to become prominent leaders and advise their companies on the right infrastructure needs to drive the business forward. As I mentioned earlier, knowing which environments and solutions are best suited to your company’s needs and why will help back up your recommendations.

Activities like conducting a competitive analysis vs. other providers will go a long way toward showing business leaders that you are keeping broader business goals like cost savings and efficiency in mind. Skills such as marketing and product management are not only for vendors, they are becoming increasingly important for IT departments whose delivery of IT services is inevitably going to be compared to outside service providers. By being a resource for business unit leaders, IT professionals can demonstrate that they are tuned into business demands and are vital contributors to the organization’s success.

As we all work to adapt to changing roles and changing business climates, keeping the aforementioned tips in mind will help set you on the path to success.

ABOUT Jonathan Reeve

Jonathan Reeve, Senior Director of Product Management, SolarWinds, has built a career integrating hands-on technical development with senior-level strategic management. Having previously served as VP of Product Strategy for Hyper9, Reeve was responsible for the company’s flagship product, Virtual Environment Optimization suite. His experience spans computer networking, systems management and virtualization technologies, helping numerous start-ups and established companies generate market traction. Prior to joining Hyper9, Reeve drove product management for the network management product line at Smarts, which was acquired by EMC in 2005. He has a degree in Electrical Engineering and a PhD in Computer Networking from the University of Durham (UK).

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3 Tips for IT: Developing a Competitive Business Skill Set

As companies look to maintain a competitive advantage, IT professionals are increasingly being charged with adopting a business-focused mindset. The role of an IT manager is no longer simply ensuring that systems and networks are functioning properly – they now need to be adept at anticipating business needs and having a recommendation on how to address them.

As pressure comes from the C-suite to spend IT dollars wisely, IT professionals may find themselves needing to demonstrate their expertise by identifying and implementing virtualization and cloud tools that best fit their company's needs. Unless IT proactively forms a recommendation, they risk being entirely cut out of the conversation as vendors target business unit leaders directly.

IT professionals must understand where their companies are heading in order to be prepared and stay competitive. Here are some tips on what IT professionals can do to position themselves for success as their role in the organization continues to develop:

1. Stay Agile

IT professionals need to be comfortable interacting with all parts of the business. As their role in an organization moves beyond implementation, maintenance and troubleshooting to performing competitive analysis and issuing recommendations, it is important to stay on top of developments in the industry and what they mean for the business.

IT professionals should be up-to-speed on technologies like virtualization and cloud, which have become game-changers for IT. However not every application is suited for the cloud, and it’s important to have a core understanding of each and be able to make the distinction. Complicated, one-off custom apps may not be suited (or cost efficient) for a move to the cloud, whereas hosting high volume, repeatable apps in the cloud can help with standardization. The key is knowing which environment is appropriate and will best meet the needs of your business.

2. Carefully cultivate partnerships

IT professionals need to identify and collaborate with vendors who are making it easier to adopt features that both enhance virtualization and facilitate the transition to cloud computing.

Start experimenting early and often to understand what works for your organization and what doesn't. This will simplify the process for IT professionals whose companies are looking to move into a cloud infrastructure as you’ll already have a sense of which path to take. Another advantage is that this will demonstrate your ability to develop and manage vital partnerships that provide the right enhancement features for their companies' needs.

There will always be pressure from the C-suite to demonstrate that managing some services externally is both cost-effective and the best course of action for the organization, and understanding and anticipating internal business concerns will help you work with vendor partners to address them.

3. Become a successful business leader, from the server room to the board room

This is the defining piece. IT professionals need to become prominent leaders and advise their companies on the right infrastructure needs to drive the business forward. As I mentioned earlier, knowing which environments and solutions are best suited to your company’s needs and why will help back up your recommendations.

Activities like conducting a competitive analysis vs. other providers will go a long way toward showing business leaders that you are keeping broader business goals like cost savings and efficiency in mind. Skills such as marketing and product management are not only for vendors, they are becoming increasingly important for IT departments whose delivery of IT services is inevitably going to be compared to outside service providers. By being a resource for business unit leaders, IT professionals can demonstrate that they are tuned into business demands and are vital contributors to the organization’s success.

As we all work to adapt to changing roles and changing business climates, keeping the aforementioned tips in mind will help set you on the path to success.

ABOUT Jonathan Reeve

Jonathan Reeve, Senior Director of Product Management, SolarWinds, has built a career integrating hands-on technical development with senior-level strategic management. Having previously served as VP of Product Strategy for Hyper9, Reeve was responsible for the company’s flagship product, Virtual Environment Optimization suite. His experience spans computer networking, systems management and virtualization technologies, helping numerous start-ups and established companies generate market traction. Prior to joining Hyper9, Reeve drove product management for the network management product line at Smarts, which was acquired by EMC in 2005. He has a degree in Electrical Engineering and a PhD in Computer Networking from the University of Durham (UK).

Hot Topics

The Latest

According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

Image
Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

Image
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From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...