IT Organization Circa 2017

It seems like a good time of the year to reflect on significant milestones or events that somehow mark 2007 on the journey to 2017 for IT organizations.  Ten years from now, when students of IT organizational evolution look back on 2007, what might the year be remembered for?  I’ll split this into a couple of posts as we ramp down 2007.

• SOA crossed the threshold into reality

The challenge with this type of observation is that it is so dependent upon IT organizational maturity.  For some IT shops, this even happened several years ago.  For some, it still has not happened, but I believe is close.  Hence, I’m calling 2007 as “the year SOA became reality” for the majority of Global 2000-class IT organizations.  For most of these, that reality is still “experimental” – i.e., not yet the “way we do things here.”  But, as an experiment, it has become irreversible – I don’t see any experimenters saying, “We are going to drop our flirtation with SOA.”  On the other hand, I do see many saying, “We still have not figured out exactly how we are going to deploy SOA.”  Look to 2008 to see even the most immature figure this one out.

• “Enterprise 2.0″ entered the IT organizational consciousness

Popularized by Andrew McAfee in a Spring 2006 Sloan Management Review and also referred to as “Next Generation Enterprise” the leaders of mainstream corporations and IT organizations are starting to pay attention to the use of emerging social networking technologies that have so penetrated youth culture.  I believe that we will, in retrospect, mark 2007 as the year this “fringe movement” became mainstream – at least in terms of recognizing the movement as real, with significant potential to shape business models and business performance.  Experiments are beginning, even in the most conservative and traditional businesses and IT shops.  Look to 2008 to see experimentation everywhere, and many of the experiments to move into full scale deployment.

• IT Organizations started moving out of the personal computing support business

In 2007, we began to see IT organizations acknowledge that selecting, procuring, deploying and supporting end user personal computing (desktop PC’s, laptops, handhelds, etc.) just did not make sense, and moved themselves out of that business.  This shift was nicely illustrated by a friend who is a stock broker working for one of the big investment houses.  He often bemoans to me how poor he finds their IT organization in supporting him and enabling him to be productive.  For 2008 they’ve told their brokers, “When your computer is up for replacement, we will make a financial allowance, but find yourself a local provider who can equip you and support you.  We will offer advice on configurations, but you are now essentially on your own.”  I believe this approach to end user personal computing will become mainstream in 2008 – it’s already the way most organizations handle cell phones.  I talked in an earlier post about The Evolving IT Service Stack  - this move out of end user computing is consistent with the “Jacob’s Ladder” model I described there, and in fact is part of a larger trend, where infrastructure activities are moved out of in-house IT shops, and to external providers, be those the public infrastructure or outsourcers.  The big driver here is not that outsiders can do it cheaper, but they can typically do it better, and most importantly, allow your IT organizational focus to shift to “higher business value” activities and services.