Talent is expensive. Using a company’s prime information technology talent for the computing version of pouring concrete is silly. Low-level tasks and infrastructure setups can and should be considered in the same light as chairs and paper. That is, something the company buys to get on with what they really want to do. Why should a business build everything themselves?

Chad Sakac (pictured), president of the Converged Platforms and Solutions Division at EMC, knows that most low-level technologies are becoming a commodity. He calls this the “build-to-buy path.” Computer systems that companies used to build can now be bought off the shelf.

At the Dell EMC World 2017 conference in Las Vegas, Sakac sat down with host John Walls (@JohnWalls21) and guest host Keith Townsend (@CTOAdvisor), of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s mobile livestreaming studio, to talk about the benefits of this build-to-buy path. (* Disclosure below.)

Sakac answered questions from concerning when a company should build and when they should buy.

Looking higher in the stack

The IT field is full of creative people, and creative people want to build. However, many of the things they used to build, such as servers, storage and infrastructure systems, are now becoming commodities, according to Sakac. Does a company need a unique infrastructure stack? Not really, he said. The real innovation comes on top of all that.

A more efficient path involves buying turnkey solutions for low-level problems, leaving the creative people free to explore more interesting concerns. The need for creativity in IT is greater than ever; it’s just moving northward. The benefits pay out in innovation, even if the tech people need to shift their focus, Sakac explained.

“It’s a little bit of carrot and a little bit of stick,” he said.

There are, of course, some domains where there’s still a lot of art in the low-level tasks, but those are becoming an exception. In most cases, the low-level stuff is just something that needs to be done in order to do the things that make the company its money. Serving customers and providing value is where people should be building their art, Sakac believes.

The core thing, according to Sakac, is doing something unique to the company. That’s where innovation benefits the business the most. If people are focused on something unique to their company, they should be building. Otherwise, it makes more sense to follow the build-to-buy path, he concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s independent editorial coverage of Dell EMC World 2017. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Dell EMC World. Neither Dell nor other sponsors have editorial influence on content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE