Some maintain that venture capitalists are rejecting any and all business plans that include capital spending for IT. Their rationale is all about focus and flexibility. "Pay as you go" IT (enabled through cloud services such as software-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service, and infrastructure-as-a-service) frees management to focus on the product, not the plumbing. For start-ups, it's all about faster time to market and the ability to quickly accommodate changes in demand.

Of course, in this day and age, it's not just start-ups that need to be nimble. Apple's famous supply chain, for example, is all about ensuring focus and flexibility by letting others manage the component production and hold the fixed assets long after Apple has shifted its focus elsewhere.

From the outside, your company probably doesn't look like a start-up. But maybe it should take a hint from the VCs and start acting like one.

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