A Better Way Forward for the IT Industry and All of its Stakeholders
“Businesses need to transform… be skeptical of business as usual. There needs to be a movement. There has to be a better way. Crew consciousness is the shift we need.” – Tomás O’Leary, CEO and Founder, Origina
By forcing customers to migrate to the cloud or risk losing support and security updates, tech vendors effectively continue a tradition of policy, not performance or actual need, creating e-waste. In a situation where so few (besides the business and shareholders at the top) benefit from such activity, it is clearly time to reconsider the control large businesses have over software licensing, hardware usage rights and e-waste creation.
Business as usual in B2B technology often means a neglect of environmental impacts. When arbitrary changes to software force companies to push newly depreciated hardware to the landfill, everyone loses out. Aggressive profit-optimization practices are not only a threat to fair competition and a potentially huge expense to current customers, but also a serious problem for human health and the environment.
Free ICT has been reaching out to policymakers in Europe and the U.S. to address the need for regulations around software, networking equipment and the license terms attached to both. This journey will continue, and we hope to evolve the tech industry to a new normal where sustainability and freedom of choice prevail.
Tomás O’Leary is a vocal and influential thought leader in the enterprise software market. In 2012, after spending more than 15 years working at IBM and the IBM business partner community, Tomás created an alternative for traditional enterprise software users – Origina, the global leader in the independent IBM® and HCL® third-party maintenance and support market.
Tomás wants to change the software industry by delivering outstanding software maintenance services that champion customer rights and unlock value. He also is one of the founders of Free ICT Europe and Free ICT USA, lobby groups specifically set up to address lack of customer choice and perceived unfairness in the enterprise ICT aftermarkets, including software support.
