I’m not the first to jump on the latest technology. Even after working in high-tech for more than 20 years, I am still a late adopter. But if you can prove to me that a new technology will save me or my company money, I’ll make the switch in an instant.

In 2008 the company I work for, Precise (a developer of application performance management systems), was spun out of its parent company Symantec and into a private company. Suddenly, we had 1,000 customers to support, and a limited IT department. Symantec offered to sell us licenses for SAP and other enterprise software packages that we had been using. But in our new structure, we needed applications that were scaled down and easier to support. We ditched the world of licensed software and annual commitments to large capital expenses on equipment — the traditional way of doing IT — in favor of cloud, SaaS and virtualization.