The IT department will not disappear by 2013 after all, but
actually two years earlier because of the recession, says the head
of software as a service (SaaS) supplier Nasstar, who predicted the
IT department's demise.
The recession will accelerate the use of SaaS as companies
attempt to cut costs. This will mean less need for IT management,
said Charles Black, CEO at hosted software provider Nasstar. He
predicted last year that web-based applications will make the
traditional IT department redundant.
He
said last year that IT is becoming a utility and the cost of
management will be replaced by simple plug and play software over
the internet.
But Black has brought the demise of the IT forward. "Since I
made that prediction in March 2008 the economy has worsened. We are
now officially in recession and the move towards cloud computing
has gathered pace considerably as companies look to trim costs
without denting efficiency. I now think it is entirely likely the
IT department as we know it will be a thing of the past as early as
2011," he said.
"Companies are shifting the overheads of cost, infrastructure
and management outside their own four walls and choosing simply to
pay for what they use," added Black.