I feel this on a near-spiritual level. Once you factor in communication tools (including but not limited to...project management, email, calendar, chat, VOIP,

I feel this on a near-spiritual level. Once you factor in communication tools (including but not limited to...project management, email, calendar, chat, VOIP, and CRM) alongside your "real" technical stuff that actually powers your services or products, you invariably end up with a ton of different tools because nobody has the time to even try to build all those different core components. There's a ton of friction to doing anything differently. For example, I'm fairly anti-google. Therefore, I host my own email. Doing that, even in the most simplistic way possible, means utilizing several tools or technologies (mailinabox + a deliverability service being the most simplistic I can imagine). A larger operation would certainly have more specific needs that would require another approach - and the human effort of implementation and maintenance that goes with it. We have a handful of people, in 3 different countries, each requiring differing currencies (USD, GBP, EURO). Our client base is global. Combine the operational complexity with everything else and even a small operation can start to feel like a fortune 500 company.