Post-modern IT: Question #1

Posted by Chris Howard and Mike Rollings

This is the first of four questions posed to my team from a recent press inquiry. The subject was generally around SaaS and the cloud, but with specific questions around the future of the IT organization.

We ended up describing what I call post-modern IT: IT that has been broken apart, re-examined, and re-assembled to meet the needs of the modern, global organization. The "flat world" thesis is at play, and economic pressures dominate choices.

Mike and I tag-teamed our responses, and we're open for more input.

Question # 1: With so many services around, do you still need a traditional IT department?

<chris>

The key word here is traditional. As services improve and more of the commodity IT is moved out of the shop, it changes what the IT department does, and perhaps also its size. As a result, IT departments may just diminish unless they take the opportunity to do more with the freedom-from-commodity they have gained. On the other hand, the move to external services may signal (in part) a dissatisfaction with IT that will make it hard for the post-modern IT shop to make a compelling case for itself.

Certainly, architecture must remain an in-house function, regardless of which external and internal services are implemented. That's the link to business capabilities. (we'll come back to this in detail in a later post)

</chris>

<mike>

I agree, the post-modern IT shop is not traditional IT. The difference for me is that IT moves to being a broker of services for the business, and facilitating the orchestration required between them.  Yet to do this effectively there needs to be a collective understanding of business functions, processes and information required for any given business outcome and how the solution portfolio transforms. Therefore, business architecture is going to be a primary concern for IT instead of today's stepchild.

</mike>

Question #2: How much can you realistically do without internal IT at enterprise grade and when do you really need on-premise IT and in-house IT? (stay tuned)