IT as a (remote) Service
The Internet is destroying and creating in one sweep of a rather majestic
arm.
Some have prognosticated that in the future, even enterprises will rent their
applications from Software as a Service (SaaS) vendors. This may or may
not come to pass, but I had thought that end-to-end IT as a Service (ITaaS) was
a practical impossibility.
Now I am not so sure.
IBM has identified some low hanging fruit in the form of continuous data backup
for SMBs. Their offering, peddled in part through Circuit City, PC
World, and Staples, offers to continually back up and version control files on
user PCs. The scheme accomplishes as a service what SMBs have trouble
doing as an IT policy, and eliminates the problems small IT departments face
(establishing backup servers, enforcing end user storage policies, architecting
versioning, etc.) In short, SMBs can rent a level of service heretofore
know only to large, well heeled enterprises.
Plenty of competitively priced network bandwidth has destroyed barriers to
many functions, and now seems to be knowing at the very door of IT. It is
wholly conceivable that the value of an IT department will be reduced over time.
They will still be essential in the process of evaluation, acquisition, and
deployment. But as an ongoing provider of process, they may lose
value.
The question my alleged mind is raking through is "what other nominal IT
process functions could be outsourced?" You can outsource some security
functions today, which unlike end user PC backups, is mission critical.
You can outsource email management. But will we reach a point where server
provisioning and configuration are outsourced, and most of that work is
automated? Will IBM, with it’s mighty services group, be able to handle
"ad hoc" scripting from accumulated libraries? Will HP’s Openview become a
service for managing entire SMB network infrastructures from afar?
Time will tell, but I’m wagering cold, hard cash that the answer to all these
questions is "yes".
