Nicholas Carr has an interesting post titled, “An IT sea change for smaller companies.“Â He suggests that the time has come for small businesses to stop rolling their own information technolgy,

I would call it more a habit than a myth – the ability for companies to jettison most or all of their in-house IT infrastructure is a recent development – but I think he’s right. Ironically, even as many smaller companies are embracing hardware hosting, software-as-a-service, and other forms of utility computing, many others are currently building up their IT assets, drawn by low component costs. I think those companies are going to end up regretting a lot of the investments they’re making. They’ll soon find that the highest IT costs aren’t component costs but labor costs, maintenance costs, electricity costs, and other secondary expenses – and that owning your own gear ends up reducing your flexibility rather than increasing it.