IT Service Week

I recently saw a Question posted on LinkedIn called Where will IT be in 5-10 years?. This question was then followed by a series of questions about the future of COBOL to off-shoring IT. I’m posting my responses to IT Service Week since I feel some of the outlook would be of interest to technology managers looking to the future of IT.

What new roles will become important?
Roles that define new innovative ways of achieving business results in creating sales revenue and cost savings in labor. Roles that align technology with business.

What roles will fade away?
Anything that can be automated will be automated. Roles such as setting up accounts, troubleshooting simple issues, and manual process roles will be either eliminated or fading away. Individuals in these roles will be re-allocated to roles that manage this automation or improve the automation. What once took a team of 9 to complete will now take 1 person to manage.

Will COBOL still be here?
Yes… Legacy systems take many years to move off of… but technology managers should not focus on the technology used but the return on investment of that technology. If a system built in COBOL is still delivering a return higher than the cost of not developing a new system then why should they get rid of COBOL?

Will Project Management be the same?
I think a higher responsibility will be placed on Project Managers to not only deliver projects on time and within budget but they will also have to start showing the value of their projects to VPs and the Executives making budget decisions.

What will methods, software, hardware lookk like?
Hardware that is cheaper than PB sandwiches and Software that is more expensive than caviar…. We will eventually move off of a software based system and more of a service oriented architecture. Ironic…. but Citrix Services and Windows Terminal Services was ahead of its time. The cost reduction of NOT having to deploy installed services to individual desktops will be a great reduction in cost. As bandwidth and disk space becomes cheaper and security concerns increase…. it may benefit some organizations to move their infrastructure to a terminal services based solution in some areas (i.e. help desk, support roles, admin roles, etc)

Will Americans carve out a niche or will all IT be offshored?
Certain tasks such as monitoring systems and maintaining databases could be off shored, but roles that require customer service or knowledge of American business operations will be very costly to offshore.

What positive observations/predictions do you have to share?

We are increasingly looking for new ways to standardize systems and processes. This is quite different than back in previous decades where everyone wanted to build their own system and their own “better” way of doing things…. now everyone wants to build interoperability between technologies. To get ahead in technology in the coming decades will mean that your organization is an information contributor and not one to suppress information.

Tags: aligning business with technology, COBOL, cost saving IT, Future of IT, IT, IT Standards, off-shoring, Technology in the future

This entry was posted on Friday, March 28th, 2008 at 7:42 pm and is filed under ITSM General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.