When I was a kid my mom would never buy clothes that fit me. It was really annoying. I'd come home from the store with new pants and shirts that were too big, hanging off of me like I was an emaciated scarecrow. Of course I did look like an emaciated scarecrow; a #2 pencil has more bulk than I did back then. Compounding the problem was the fact that I was growing ... "like a weed" as they'd say where I grew up. So, my mom was solving two problems when she bought clothes for me; a short term problem (I needed clothes now) and a long term problem (if she bought new clothes that fit at the time of purchase, I'd outgrow them in no time). I'd complain about my baggy clothes and mom would reply, "You'll grow into them." I did. It all worked out.

Mom knew the value of solving short- and long-term issues with a single solution. Solving today's problems while failing to address the future is only looking for bigger trouble and greater costs somewhere down the line. That's a concept frequently lost when dealing with Information Technology problems. Often solutions are aimed only at solving the issue causing problems today. Many times, the problem isn't actually solved at all, just the symptom, leaving the problem free to pop up later and at the most inopportune time. That's not a solution, it's just kicking the can down the road.

Solving an IT problem means fixing the problem today in a manner that facilitates change later. That's not always easy to do, and not being easy is the reason long-term solutions are so seldom implemented. But long-term solutions, ones that address a problem now and for the future, are a necessity if a business is to enjoy the benefits of a stable, productive IT environment. If your IT infrastructure has to be ripped up and reinvented to address changes in the business such as future growth or shifts in business strategy, then today's "solution" isn't really a solution at all, is it?. It's just a Band-Aid. And Band-Aids won't cut it. Businesses need a scalable solution that will grow as the business grows.

At The ITeam we don't believe in Band-Aids. We can't believe in Band-Aids. Because our fixed-cost financial model is based on preventing IT problems not just patching over symptoms, band-aids are not an option. If we have to address an issue over and over with the same client, we are losing money. Since that's how we do business, we have either make sure our clients are problem free, or issues that do arise are small in scope and resolved with a solution that addresses the "now", while being sustainable and flexible enough to support future business changes to come.

Since we lose money by allowing problems to go unsolved, guess what we do? We solve problems! Better yet, we prevent problems through our ground-breaking PULSE methodology. Find out how IT problems should be solved by calling The ITeam. We are the long-term IT solution. - Mike