Reports of IT department's death exaggerated, industry pros say

IT professionals are mad as hell about Nicholas Carr's new book, which predicts the demise of the corporate IT department and its replacement by utility computing.

Network World's Web site has been flooded with comments from IT professionals since Monday, when it published a review of Carr's latest book, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World from Edison to Google.

"This article proves that Nicholas Carr can still get a book published regardless…of his extreme lack of knowledge of logic, business, economics and information technology," says one anonymous writer, who calls Carr "a talentless hack with an English Lit degree.''

Another anonymous commenter says Carr is "an author screaming for attention and not someone versed and experienced in IT. He's just a small child crying out for someone to look at him. It's OK, we'll entertain you by at least reacting to your latest ponderings."

The comments -- more than 50 in all -- are not your typical Internet rants and raves. Instead, they are mostly detailed, well-articulated arguments about why companies will continue to need their own corporate IT departments to secure customer data, provide end-user support, upgrade network infrastructure and deploy custom business applications.

The controversy surrounding Carr's new book is likely to continue, as Network World hosts an online chat with the author on Thursday, Jan. 10 from 2 to 3 p.m. EST. The transcript of that chat will be available by Friday, Jan. 11.

The reader-submitted comments are running 8 to 1 against Carr's premise that IT departments will have little work left to do once business computing moves out of corporate-run data centers into utility computing facilities.

"I don't believe you're going to see this large transformation as Carr predicts," says one anonymous commenter. "Companies have invested hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, into infrastructure for their business. They are going to just throw it all away? I highly doubt that…Many companies, like my own, will absolutely never trust their data to a 'utility computing solution' aka, Google….Downsizing, yes, IT department's dying off, no I don't really think so."

"I've worked for a number of organizations who thought outsourcing IT was the key to success, and they universally failed," says a reader who identifies himself as Andrew van der Stock. "Our devices and styles of computing will change (see Salesforce.com, etc.), but the need to centrally manage a number of devices that the company owns will not go away."

This isn't the first time Carr has provoked the wrath of IT professionals. In 2003, Carr published a provocative essay in the Harvard Business Review entitled "Does IT Matter?" In that article, Carr asserted that IT investments failed to provide companies with a strategic advantage because as soon as one company adopted a new technology, its competitors did the same.

Carr is stirring up the pot again with his new book, which argues that utility computing will replace corporate IT departments much as electric utilities replaced company-run power plants in the early 1900s. Carr says it is more efficient for companies to buy utility computing services via the Internet than it is for them to operate their own data centers and network infrastructures.

"Interesting idea to be sure, but I'll believe it when I see it," says a writer identified as Jon Allred. "The fact is that a business's IT needs are far more complex than an electricity generator. So much so that the whole idea seems more like a pro-outsourcing political polemic than an honest look at the state of corporate IT infrastructure."

IT professionals say Carr has underestimated the role that data centers of customer information will play in retaining corporate IT departments.

"We are seeing a more commodity approach to hardware and services, which can be compared to electrical companies, but as for the security of the firm's lifeblood, data, I believe that companies will want to maintain a firm grasp on that, no matter all the hype otherwise," writes Barry W.

"The single greatest measure of security for data is the physical kind: e.g. not hooking the information up to a network of nodes, any one of which represents a transfer point and an opportunity for a thief," says an anonymous commenter. He adds that Carr "is living in a dream world of unpatented, unprotected information."

Several IT professionals point out that corporate IT departments are already running more efficient and less costly data centers thanks to a shift towards virtualization of servers.

"There is an opportunity over time for corporations to decrease IT staff. But this has more to do with VMware than Google," one anonymous commenter says. "Why did Carr not focus on virtual technology…He missed a big opportunity to get the detail right." (Compare storage virtualization products.)

IT professionals also argue that utility computing providers will not be flexible or responsive enough to corporate needs, and so companies will retain their own IT departments.

"Businesses will perceive utility IT solutions as brittle, inflexible and unresponsive," says Milton Smith, who nonetheless admits he finds the utility computing concept "interesting."

"The outsourcing model is what's being practiced right now with large corporations, but very soon they will realize that a poor investment has been made," argues an anonymous writer. The writer describes "[Service-level agreements] not being met, poor customer service and lack of resources for specialized technology."

Carr also predicts the end of the IT profession as a lucrative career path, except for those who want to work for service providers. Carr says IT professionals are indistinguishable from one company to the next, and that they mostly do maintenance chores rather than application development.

IT professionals find this accusation absurd.

"I completely disagree with the idiotic assessment that IT is dead," says one writer. "In fact, it will evolve into a much bigger part of the future business world. Yes, utility computing will displace many of the current end user devices, PCs, etc., but it has nothing to do with the data and services offered that business and industry uses."

Carr also says companies will no longer require legions of technical staff, and he envisions a future in which only one person is required to run an entire corporate computing operation.