Network World

This guy either:
a) Does not know a damn thing about IT.
b) Trying to get a rise out of everyone to sell his book.

I would agree that many business challenges are industry wide and a utility computing concept is interesting. However, to simply box up all business challenges into a single IT solution is hard to sell to anyone.

Businesses will perceive utility IT solutions as brittle, inflexible, and unresponsive. For vendors, the differences between their offerings foster business advantage. For instance, Sun's Java JRE runs on many platforms but runs best on Sun's platform. Vendors want to provide illusion that their software plays well with each other and industry standards but in fact software that does not secures their financial future. And I don't see vendors changing anytime soon.

Also the idea that all IT professionals are created equal and we more or less all perform the same duties preposterous. All these fallacies withstanding, I do like the concept of boxing our IT solutions. Maybe a more practical place to start would be with SOA services that cross cut the enterprise. However, even that seems challenging. For example, how would you create a single security model that will service all software in the industry and meet all business challenges?

Milton Smith

Carr's vision is either utopian or dystopian, depending on how you look at it, but either way, it mixes a few likely trends with lots of naive wishful thinking, unsound logic, and sophomoric shock value.

The likely trends include greater commoditization and standardization, SaaS, utility computing, and the like. The IT landscape of today is already very different from the IT landscape of 20 years ago. Anyone who thinks IT won't be any different 20 years from now is being just as naive as Carr.

Yet let's look at his claims and analogies. Consider electricity. It's true that most organizations don't run their own power plants, but some still do. Light switches need no user's guides or special training, yet almost all organizations depend on having professional engineers who design the systems and trained technicians who service them -- and these specialists often don't work for the utility company. Many organizations still depend on in-house facilities people who deal with electrical systems -- as a first tier of response, as the link to whatever's been outsourced, and as the responsible party for seeing that the systems serve the organization's requirements.

Carr cites excess capacity and similarity of work as sure signs that IT departments will disappear. But think about that. (Carr hasn't, but I encourage others to.) That's true of virtually every job function you can name -- HR people, finance people, restaurant staff, teachers, scientific researchers, assembly line workers, soldiers, etc., etc., etc. If Carr's logic is sound, then virtually every job ever created is about to disappear, except at the "utility" companies that will do all the work instead.

you're wrong.

Technology moves so fast that not one company (service providers) alone can keep up with a limited number of resources.
The outsourcing model is whats being practiced right now with large coprorations but very soon they will realize that a poor investment has been made. SLAs not being met, poor customer service and lack of resources for specialized technology.

The argument, as presented, is rubbish. If it were so easy to outsource such components of a business then it would not only be the IT department, but also the finance, sales, and human resources departments also being given the flick. We saw the same tired old arguments in the 80’s when it was predicted that there would be no need for finance departments because computers would do all the work. It didn’t happen. It appears as though the whole premise of the book is to be sensationalist enough to help the book sell.

If the software programmer is dead, then I hope he plans on growing that artificial intelligence in a bucket. Just add soil, bucket, and uh... some seeds or something? Or perhaps a visitation from aliens is expected soon? I think I left their intinerary on my computer... oh, that one is gone, right'o.

I seriously believe many of the functions of todays IT departments will be outsourced and function better that way as well, but most companies are not like skype, or youtube, or craigslist and won't run completely without some proprietary system. I say "proprietary" not in the normal sense but in the sense that it's not just the same outsourced system as the competing company. Something they pick and control themselves.

Most companies are different from the others. Electricity and water and utility is not. Hardware services will be an excellent utility to buy, run all your software on our servers, that I believe. But the demise of software programmers?

Exactly when did he have a real job last?

I don't know why all the fuzz around this guy... IT resources have been being outsourced from years now. I work at an IBM GDC (Global Delivery Center) and pretty much what we do is what this guy describes as the "future". We hire computing power and personnel to whomever wants to get rid of its bulked and oversized IT department. Please, somebody tell him!

Demise of I.T.? I hardly think so. I.T. may appear less complex to the end user, but how we get to that point requires a breadth of knowledge across many platforms.
With the rise in complexity of everything needed to make that "cloud", from the LAN/WAN/VoIP integration, to Windows, Unix, and Linux IOS's, the I.T. world is vastly more complex than it was 10 years ago. Yes, some things are easier, but what happens when something goes wrong a few years after a service is implemented, and the core team has moved on to other things, and the currect staff is unfamilular with the proccessies?
All the customer sees is that the service is down, not the fact that I.T. may have been commoditized to the point that the current staff knows nothing about a piece of the puzzle needed to make the service whole again?
Then I.T. will matter when the (former) user-friendly service is unavailable.

I.T. matters. It is what allows your iPhones and Blackberries able to receive those nightly reports. We are not the day laborers used to make your clothes - We create your electronic world that envelopes you, and we will be around for a long time to come - adding that new gotta-have-feature to your precious new toy {;>