Going Bedouin

 A great post.  A company is people with talent.  All the other stuff (office space, servers, telephone systems, etc.) are just necessary evils to support the people.  Today, there are so many companies who's business it is to host infrastructure.  How little infrastructure can you get away with?  One large company that I work with is ultra-distributed.  They have a main office in Colorado, but their people are all over the US, doing work, managing teams, you name it.  They've made geography irrelevant. 

When I launched my one-man shop, I decided that my first commandment would be "Thou shalt maintain no servers."  Some people love to set up servers, and have a network of 10 machines in their home office.  I hate it.  I just want my e-mail/blog/accounting software to work at all times.  I want to spend zero hours on server admin.  I want to be able to flatline my machine, and be back at 100% productivity as fast as possible.  I don't even install a local blog reader any more. I want to be equally productive and capable in "the office" or on the road. I joke that I'm a hermit crab.  I carry my office in a backpack. 

Grego posits building larger organizations that are infrastructure-less, noting how infrastructure adds inertia and drag to your operation.  Infrastructure decreases agility, and as grego notes, you can mark the beginning of the end for many companies as the point where they move into that new big office.