Gartner looks into the future, or tries to define it, again. In “Traditional IT department to disappear in radical five year transition”, Gartner proposes that successful IT organisations will divide into at least two parts with one focused on technology sourcing and delivery while the other will focus on architecture and change. Their names may change from IT departments to process or innovation departments.
Previously we pointed to an article on Gartner’s vision of the future of organisational IT, which speculated that in five years time, commoditisation of products and services will lead to the demise of the technical functions of that unit of the business. Its focus will turn towards processes and innovation instead. Google sees the need for IT personnel to embrace this development or end up being pushed into obsolescence. According to Google, the responsibility of the company’s IT people will be “coaching users as to the best tools to choose to enhance their performance on the job”. Sounds something like “governance”?
Following on from the above, at Gartner’s ITXPO, advice was that the consumerisation of IT is now to “cause significant disruption in the technology sector”. The response to that was to be found in encouraging corporate IT to become innovative ("The IT Revolution Needs You",2007). Subsequently, it was speculated that commoditisation of products and services threatens the subsistence of the entirely technical functions of corporate IT (see above). More precisely, Gartner has now identified 14 delivery models that have to be taken into consideration, which will transform the IT industry. In effect, these will, in many areas, supplant the traditional lifecycle of systems and applications, where the user "owned" at least part of the infrastructure, and retained “risk and responsibility for the overall design and management”. These “alternative” delivery models are meant to bypass the corporate IT function, and soon may be mainstream.