Mark Gibbs says in his article in CIO Today, "...services such as Salesforce,
NetSuite, Webex and CrownPeak are becoming major forces in delivering enterprise
business resources. This is not only because they are cost effective, but also
because they simplify the enterprise I.T. landscape in much the same way that
adopting outsourced virtualized infrastructure for customer-facing I.T.
operations does."
http://www.cio-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=0020000025W0
I've spoken with Mark a number of times about the fundamental changes we believe
SaaS adoption will drive in the makeup of IT organizations.
He really gets
it.
In 10 years time, very few IT organizations will have any software
developers.
In fact, five years from now the smartest IT organizations will
be driving customizations, integrations, and business rule management in SaaS
systems. They will be doing training, managing vendors and so on, but
they will be doing less and less system management and support and much less
development.
The days of installed and managed software products for a
single customer are going away rapidly. As Mark says, "Internal technical
staff will exist primarily to enable, manage, and secure user access and data
resources on user computing devices on a simpler network that will exist
primarily to connect users to outsourced applications and services."
Jim Howard