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Octopus is very tech-savvy (especially for a energy utility company), so in theory it's doable, especially in their line of business and size. Note that 1200 is

Octopus is very tech-savvy (especially for a energy utility company), so in theory it's doable, especially in their line of business and size. Note that 1200 is still small as large companies go, especially these days when you don't have to build everything yourself and you can use agile/lean techniques to organize yourself. * a team to manage the cloud relationship for email/web/hosting for their own apps, and colo if needed. * design their own laptop images (or get them designed by the vendor) and outsource laptop provisioning/imaging to a 3rd party. If you use virtual desktops you can use your cloud vendor for hosting them. Both of those could be 5-10 people with the right skills (called it an "infrastructure" team) -- less than 5 is possible but would create key person risk. There's still people with the right set of specialized skills, but it hasn't become a huge bureaucratic organization. Looking at their website, they appear to have a data science team, so none of this precludes them having other teams to address cross-cutting concerns like cyber-sec, reliability, etc. Or from having software developers attached to teams tasked with delivering new products, e.g. they have several API offerings[1]. [1] https://developer.octopus.energy/docs/api/ https://developer.octopus.energy/docs/api/

Kwpolska 6y ago
> Both of those could be 5-10 people with the right skills (called it an "infrastructure" team) Why not call it just the IT team? What would the difference be, really?
- signal11 6y ago
  You could call it that. But in the context of the article, an "IT Department" (the term it actually uses) in many large non-tech companies, connotes heavy-handed control and -- usually -- poor user experience. I suspect many companies would want to avoid that poor experience, whatever they name the people who manage their tech.

Kwpolska 6y ago

> Both of those could be 5-10 people with the right skills (called it an "infrastructure" team) Why not call it just the IT team? What would the difference be, really?

signal11 6y ago
You could call it that. But in the context of the article, an "IT Department" (the term it actually uses) in many large non-tech companies, connotes heavy-handed control and -- usually -- poor user experience. I suspect many companies would want to avoid that poor experience, whatever they name the people who manage their tech.