The Future of IT (Professionals)

So, I'm occasionally having an interesting experience these days.

Very often, I'm asked to share EMC's views on what's broadly called "the future of IT".

And, in the act of doing so, we usually end up in a discussion around "the future of IT professionals".

I think this is a discussion we'll be having more often in the future.

The Future of IT

One of the things that large IT vendors (such as EMC) are expected to do is to have clear views about how customer requirements and the technology will evolve in the future.

Among all the cool technologies, perhaps the most powerful thread in this discussion is the expected shift in the consumption model: the explosive growth of external IT services for businesses. 

Call it SaaS, outsourcing, cloud, utility, whatever -- much of the industry believes that there's going to be a big shift toward consuming services rather than consuming technology directly.

Personally, I think Nicholas Carr's book ("The Big Switch") makes as compelling a case as any as to why this is largely inevitable.  I could quibble about a few points in his arguments, but I end up with the same conclusion: in the future, organizations will consume far more IT services "outside the firewall".

Nick points to cost and economies of scale, and he's right.  I think additional arguments can be found in flexibility, time to deployment, specialization of function, and so on.  All roads seem to lead in the same direction, take any one you choose.

And as I sit in a room with IT professionals, and we describe the world where progressively more of IT starting moving outside the enterprise, there's usually a point where people start exchanging nervous glances back and forth, and may be wondering -- what does this mean to me?

My take?  It's all good ...

IT Professionals Get More Important In This World

The mega-trend is hard to argue with; if anything, information and its associated delivery technologies are getting more important to business, and not less.  In any given calendar year, I've yet to see someone who has less information, fewer new application requirements, etc.  Maybe less budget, but that's a different story ...

Every year, IT becomes more and more important to more and more businesses.

I'd also argue that, over time, IT organizations move up the value stack.  Less time is spent on the operations, etc. and more time is spent solving business problems.  Every IT organization is at different points in this journey, but the trend is inescapable.

In this new world, instead of selecting the best product vendors, you're selecting and managing the best IT service provider vendors.  You're deciding which functions are better done internally, and which ones are candidates for an external service. 

And, trust me, the line between the two will continually move over time.

I'm predicting that there will be an enormous number of new IT service offerings in the coming years; each one will have to evaluated -- and re-evaluated -- against current and future requirements.  Just like you evaluate vendors today.

Someone will still have to integrate external services with internal requirements.  There's always going to need to have a value-added layer that the business won't do without.  Maybe it's application integration, maybe it's operational process integration -- that part won't be going away, and -- if anything -- this becomes more important over time.

Working with business users isn't going to go away anytime soon.  Sure, certain aspects of user and business support will go to service providers (e.g. PC help desk), but there are always going to be people with big challenges, and they'll always be looking for help and advice.

Information Governance

If the trend towards external service providers is changing "how" IT gets done, I believe that there's a second trend around "what" IT considers important.

I've tried to make the case that -- like money and finances -- information is extremely important stuff to any organization.  Just like the CFO knows where all the money comes from, where it is, where it's going and how it's being used -- the IT organization is finding itself pulled into an analagous role around information.

When you start thinking of the CIO as the "CFO of information", a very different picture emerges for the future of IT.  Understanding the value of information in a global business context.  Understanding the costs and risks associated with different information management practices.

Like the CFO, being able to audit how information is gathered, managed, used and retained.  Some of you reading this have been exposed to an "information audit".  If not yet, it may be coming soon to your shop.

We don't have to go far in the popular press to find a plethora of examples where information was managed poorly, and the consequences made the headlines.  And that's just the ones we read about.

Infrastructure Is Still Important

There are those of you out there that really get this whole infrastructure thing: what it does, how to build it, and how to run it.  In this new world, I think you'll be very much in-demand at the other end of the wire; helping to design create and manage the next-generation IT farms that we'll all be depending on.

Maybe it'll be at a traditional IT organization with sufficient scale to justify their own "cloud", maybe it will be with a service provider, or something entirely different. 

When information infrastructures scale to the next order of magnitude, a new breed of professionals will be needed to make it all happen.

The Future Of IT Professionals?

Stepping back from all of this, a clear picture emerges for me.

They will understand far more about how a business uses information, and will consult on how to do so better.

They will become adept at evaluating new external IT services in much the same way they evaluate products and technologies today.

They will be able to decide when something is better done either inside or outside, and why.

They will help to integrate external IT services with internal requirements and processes.

And, above all, future IT professionals will help provide stewardship for the organization's most precious asset -- information -- balancing value, costs and risks -- in an ever-changing landscape.

And, if they're in the infrastructure side of the business, they'll be operating at a scale far beyond what we usually contemplate today.

In this new world, I think IT professionals will find themselves even more important than before -- if they adapt quickly to the new landscape.

Are you ready?

Comments

[Ade MCCormack]

I go along with what you are saying, but would also add globalisation to the mix. More about my thoughts on this on my blog at: http://ademccormack.typepad.com/itvalue/2008/03/the-global-futu.html

[Bhadra Gordon]

If organizations will consume far more information outside the firewally what will happen to information security? Especially when it comes to a company's proprietary information. Will the rules change?