Is IT Dead?

Folks just can't seem to let go of this idea that IT is dying or dead. "Write it off," they say, "don't tell your kids to go into IT." This recent opinion article in ComputerWorld cites the recently announced layoff of 9,000 HP workers as some sort of proof.

Well, I just don't buy it. It is simply too easy of an argument to claim the death of this or that. What everyone seems to be forgetting is that the IT industry is primarily about technology -- and that is in constant flux. If HP were to have laid off all of it's Novell engineers when that great empire fell, would we be having the same conversation? Every technology has it's day, but unlike the article, I argue that the mission of IT has not and should never change. IT has, as its core mission, the objective of providing IT services to enable the business to achieve its solutions.

There is no to me difference whether those solutions exist within the walls of the company or not. IT has managed vendors, outsourcing and relationships for decades. When's the last time a company hosted publicly facing stuff out of a branch office by choice? Instead that's all moved to (typically) a third-party data center. Most enterprises don't operate their own conference calling center either, preferring to have a dedicated enterprise or voice carrier do it.

This idea of the "cloud" is all the same idea, just wrapped into another term. I agree that the network has become the world in which we live. Whether you call that the cloud or not is up to your own semantic distinctions. But, nonetheless, the cloud will not live on its own, will not integrate by itself and applications will not magically appear to leverage these things. All of this will still require dedicated, intelligent IT staff. They will just need different technology skill sets. 

And that is nothing new.