Something interesting is happening right now in our industry.
For the last five or six years, I’ve been knocking on the doors of hosting providers, migration consultants, and private cloud vendors to try and spark partnerships and collaborate in smarter ways.
Most of the time, the answer was:
“We’re focused on M365 (or fill-in-the-blank system).”
The idea was to centralize everything into one massive system of record and call it a day.
And now? Those same companies are now coming back with a different mindset because their customers are unhappy - they did the thing they were told, and they still don't know what data they have - and can't find what they need.
Like what you see? Want to see more? I invite you to chat with my team at Shinydocs.
They’re asking a new set of questions:
Note: By the way, here's how to regain certainty and control.
That shift has opened the door to a wave of new partnerships between hosting providers, local governments, use case consultants, and vendors like Shinydocs.
It’s creating something I’ve long believed in: an information ecosystem, where systems work together.
Instead of trying to force everything into one platform, more leaders are asking:
That’s the ecosystem mindset. It’s not about controlling all of the content in one place.
You’re going to see more and more experts teaming up across traditional boundaries like migration + hosting, compliance + data quality, search + records management.
These are partnerships rooted in solving real problems, not just selling tools.
Because here’s the truth: The smartest person in the room isn’t the one working for the biggest company. It’s the one who’s doing the thing that yields the best results.
If you’re planning your next information investment, keep this in mind: the best solutions today are born from collaboration, not consolidation.
The ecosystem play isn’t just smarter, it’s simpler and more cost effective. And it works.