I hear this all the time: "I can do it myself!" Backup solution? No, I'll build one myself. Outsource your email? No, I can run my own email server. White-label VoIP? Nope. I'm going to spin up an Asterisk box and use that.

You think I am kidding, but I'm not.

Yesterday it was: We needed to re-do our Broadsoft portal. After shopping around, we decided to build it ourselves.

It makes me wonder about a couple of things:

Are you a hobby or a business? A hobby is when you like to tinker with technology. A business is something else.

Do you know what your time and effort is worth? It takes a lot of time and effort to build a solution, maintain that hardware and software, and support it. Add in licensing, backup, redundancy and security to that budget number. Factor in that while spending your time and effort on Building Your Own, you could have been doing something else -- some other priority, some other revenue generating activity, or personal time.

There is always a debate about buy versus build. There are many reasons to buy: faster to market, outsourced skill and support, no CAPEX, knowledge base, etc. Yet there are reasons to build: you want more control, special features, proprietary, etc.

In today's world, where most service providers don't market very well or brand themselves (or their servcies), buying is the way to go. Why? It isn't about you or what you want. It's about your customers and what they want. It's a speed to market. It's about capturing wallet. And you can't do all that by yourselves. You just can't.

When I examine VDI, VoIP/Hosted PBX, UC, backup and conferencing, there isn't any special sauce being pitched. To the marketplace, it's one big nosie box about the tech and its features. That's why it doesn't sell fast and that's why you don't have to spend the effort building your own (in my opinion).

Can you put a competitive service together that your customers will be happy with in the most efficient manner?

Don't look at the cost (unless you factor in your time saved), look at results.