Why IT Should Stop Trying to Be a Value Generator

Episode description

What if IT has been chasing the wrong goal all along? Frank flips the usual “IT must create value” conversation on its head and makes the case that being a cost center might actually be the safest, smartest place for technology to sit.

After a conversation with Eric Norman, Ben De Mora, and Anderson Oliveira about IT value and FinOps, Frank challenges the idea that IT should fight to prove revenue impact at all. Instead, he argues for a model where IT behaves like the underlying utility layer of the business supporting projects, delivering compute, hardware, and AI, and staying intentionally detached from the bets, wins, and losses above it.

You will hear Frank break down:

• Why the classic data center model may have had more logic than we admit
• How projects, not IT, should own the budget and the risk
• Why “cost center” can mean safety, stability, and clarity of responsibility
• How cloud pricing changed the conversation without necessarily improving it
• What gets lost when IT tries to become more than the infrastructure layer

The real tension here is bigger than budgeting. If IT is constantly trying to justify itself as a value engine, it may be taking on responsibility for outcomes it can’t truly control. Frank’s perspective forces a hard question: are technology teams building better business results, or just chasing a label that sounds more strategic?

If you work in IT, FinOps, infrastructure, cloud, or platform strategy, this episode will challenge one of the most common assumptions in modern technology management. It is a sharp, provocative rethink of what IT is for, and whether “value creation” is always the right target.