I didn't get into the business to maintain infrastructure, but to create capability that didn't exist before so my clients could be more capable and efficient. Over the years, more and more of my time got diverted towards maintenance (mainly because of the complexity and unreliability of Windows) which zapped both my time and client resources from developing new capability (applications).

So the less time spent babysitting Exchange databases and public-touchable servers that have to be monitored realtime against all kinds of threats means more time focusing on new, fun stuff. Better for client. Better for me.

It doesn't mean that I still don't have issues to manage, but it does mean that I don't have to loose as much sleep at night. It's better reliability at lower cost. Everybody wins.

I feel that so much of IT has fallen into a trap of reliable maintenance-driven fees. For example, every month, Microsoft reliably pushes out a new set of patches with the potential to send everything to hell. So we've got to spend hours a month testing them and then carefully seeing to it that they're deployed to clients lest they fall victim to unseen bad guys. Yes, it's reliable income, but it's not what I got into the business for.