It seems that the debate between centralized and decentralized IT organizations is once again picking up steam. At one point it seemed like monolithic suites and enterprise standardization had swung the pendulum firmly toward centralized IT. But now the disruptive impact of cloud computing, and more specifically software as a service (SaaS), is fueling the decentralization fire. Two recent articles on the topic got my attention.
Mitch Betts got the ball rolling with his Computerworld post, A sneak preview of enterprise IT in 2020, promoting an upcoming report that “will suggest dramatic changes are in store for the IT department.” The preview went a little far in promoting a pretty scary future IT metric from the report, which he had to clarify with this comment a few hours after posting:
“Fortunately, the report and my post don’t actually say “demand for IT personnel will fall by 75% over the next 10 years.” I agree that would be ludicrous. What it says, in essence, is that traditional IT departments will be largely dismantled with parts being absorbed elsewhere in the business and parts being absorbed by external service providers, thus yielding a 75% drop in head count at the remaining IT department.Sorry to be unclear in the original post.”
One quote that didn’t need any clarification was:
“The CIO position will [either] expand to lead this broader group or shrink to manage technology procurement and integration.”
Loraine Lawson picked up on the thread with a post focusing on the importance of integration to IT: Could Integration Become IT’s Main Job? Instead of a bridge, she writes that integration could become a destination for enterprise IT. Agreed! (Chris Boorman recently summarized the Astonishing Growth In Integration Jobs and I outlined some of the reasons for cloud integration momentum here.) Lawson’s post pulls a few quotes from a NetworkWorld interview with Jimmy Harris, managing director of cloud computing at Accenture, who believes that in the future:
“IT will be the aggregator, assembler, tester and, to a certain extent, deployer of technology on behalf of the business, but won’t necessarily build or operate those technologies and applications itself.”
Clearly SaaS adoption has resulted in a shift in technology purchasing power, and cloud computing will require new levels of business and IT collaboration. But how dramatic will this change really be for most IT organizations? In this Forbes.com video, Informatica’s CIO Tony Young puts it this way:
“What makes you a great IT professional is your ability to understand the business.”
I’m pretty sure this is not new, but if the shift to cloud computing can help push Tony’s message forward, I think it’s a good thing.
