Does SaaS Mean the Eventual Demise of IT? - SaaS Week

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March 24, 2008
Does SaaS Mean the Eventual Demise of IT?

Over at Michael Krigsman's IT Project Failures blog is a popular post called "Is IT becoming extinct?" In it, Michael Krigsman predicts that, for several reasons, traditional IT departments are on their way out.

Krigsman lists reasons like social media's empowerment of users, availability of well funded SaaS applications that replace in-house IT infrastructures, and IT's leadship being alienated from senior management as reasons why IT will eventually go the way of the dodo.

Of course, not everyone agreed -- users responding to the post had a variety of mixed opinions -- and many predicted that IT departments would change somewhat but not disappear entirely.

Personally, I've noticed that in the case of SaaS applications that claim to replace entire IT departments that a lot of the target customers of such applications are companies that aren't likely to have a large IT department to begin with. In enterprises, SaaS applications definitely have the potential to eliminate some specific responsibilities of IT but probably not the mission entirely, I'd think.

What do you think? Will future IT departments be entirely outsourced? Post your views below.

Tags: saas, trends, IT departments,

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Comments

Increasingly more and more business applications will move to the cloud. This will no doubt have an impact on IT departments. However, I don't anticipate that this will result in their extinction. More likely they will evolve to embrace these new opportunities and be asked to move up the value chain to manage, integrate and implement these often one-size fits all SaaS solutions in line with business needs.

Posted by: Jim Yiapanis at March 24, 2008 09:11 PM | Permalink

That's just how things are and not just IT. It's just that IT is too fast for its own good (or detriment)in the name of innovation.

I do agree about 'evolve' being the more appropriate term.

Don't we all (and not just IT)?

Posted by: friarminor at April 5, 2008 12:06 AM | Permalink

Jim has a very good point. I think smaller companies are going to jump on SaaS. The IT industry will then move more towards "consulting" services in managing and implementing their SaaS solutions.

At the same time, I don't think big banks running critical legacy systems will jump on SaaS. Maybe eventually, but not soon. Look at Salesforce.com; most of their customers are small companies, the large ones are much harder to convince, but then again they are much more pragmatic.

Posted by: Boyan Tsolov at April 9, 2008 09:45 PM | Permalink