Imagine you’re the only person at work who knows how to keep the servers up and running, even though that has nothing to do with why you were hired or how you’re evaluated. Next, imagine you run the company where that person works, and you’re wondering how they can ever get back to their regular job and start meeting their deadlines again.
Unfortunately, that’s a common scenario at small businesses worldwide, and it’s a costly one. According to an AMI-Partners study commissioned by Microsoft, small businesses in the nine countries studied are losing more than US$24 billion in productivity each year when nontechnical employees, referred to as involuntary IT managers, are tasked with managing their companies’ IT solutions.