Corporate IT is Facing a Darwinian Challenge, Not a Meteor-Induced Extinction

Featured article by Sarah Lahav, CEO of SysAid Technologies

One hears a lot of talk about the “death of IT,” or even more commonly the “death of the IT Service Desk,” but how informed are these opinions and do they ultimately drive the right type of response? In my opinion, they often give the view that it will be a “death of the dinosaurs”-type extinction for internal IT organizations. With a sudden fatal event – like the assumed, dinosaur-killing meteor – rather than a gradual, Darwinian-like “survival of the fittest” decline into extinction.

Stop Looking for the Meteor

Yes, IT outsourcing was in vogue during the first decade of the 21^st century, but it failed to be a catastrophic, meteor-like event for corporate IT. Outsourcing was merely the first wake-up call for corporate IT organizations failing to deliver against business expectations around cost, quality, and innovation (and many would argue that some outsourcing deals have failed to deliver against these too). It was a symptom rather than the ultimate cause of IT’s potential extinction.

More recently, cloud was touted as the “corporate IT killer.” Cloud can certainly hurt as well as helped corporate IT organizations but there is definitely still as critical business role for the internal IT organization for both private and public (and hybrid) cloud scenarios. So far, I think we have seen that, despite all the scary talk about Shadow IT, cloud has been beneficial to internal IT teams overall. So another meteor scare passes corporate IT by (bar line-of-business cloud service adoption).

Instead Look to the Danger Within

If one looks at the publicly available statistics related the corporate IT organization’s “market share” of internal IT, it’s hard not to see the drop in IT-created infrastructure and services in favour of either IT or line-of-business-sourced (Shadow IT) cloud services. Or the increased use of personal devices (BYOD) and personal cloud services.

This decline in market share is often also coupled with disenchantment with a corporate IT organization that has failed to move with the times to reflect the changing expectations of employees and customers, and the ease of accessing alternative providers of IT services.

So the real danger was never the meteor hurtling towards the internal IT organization. Instead it was, and continues to be, IT’s inability to change itself as its ecosystem continues to change around it. In fact, it would probably not be too cheeky to state that IT’s inability to see the need for change may have been an even bigger obstacle to the required evolution than its inability to change – as it can’t get to the latter without the former.

Being “Lucky” Hasn’t Helped

Many corporate IT organizations have somewhat luckily “weathered the storm” due to the increasing corporate demand for, and dependence on, technology – with new demand replacing lost custom. So, while IT has had a continued corporate purpose, and has continued to deliver against a subset of the businesses’ total IT needs, it has probably paid too little attention to the increasing disconnect between internal IT supply and demand, and the corporate IT organization’s growing irrelevance.

It’s similar to the frog-in-boiling-water anecdote, where a frog is slowly boiled alive (as the water is heated) versus a frog that that will immediately jump out if placed into already-boiling water. So how many corporate IT organizations know how hot the water is getting around them?

I’d be surprised if any didn’t, but less sure relative to knowing how quickly the water is heating up. But it is not enough for IT to now just jump out of the water, i.e. to survive for now. Returning to my Darwinian quote – the “survival of the fittest” – this is really about evolution rather than extinction. Where corporate IT organizations should look past the first and scariest word in the phrase – “survival” – to see the last word – “fittest.” As the real need is to not to focus on the avoidance of extinction, which may only be temporary anyway, but instead to undergo an evolution that will not only prevent immediate extinction but ensure long-term survival through “fitness for purpose.”

“Survival of the Fittest-for-Purpose”

It’s a gross generalization but some corporate IT organizations are now viewed as the people that maintain the IT infrastructure, that slow down business opportunity and change, and that say “no” far more than they say “yes.”

Is it that IT organizations have changed? It’s more likely that they haven’t changed with the times. Too many corporate IT organizations haven’t evolved along with their ecosystem and, in my opinion, much of the necessary change starts with the evolution of their thinking. Corporate IT organizations need to:

1. Finally realize that they no longer have a monopoly over the technology used in the workplace (from personal use, through SaaS applications and cloud service providers, to outsourced services).

2. Understand that they no longer have the corporate status and the power they had in the 1990s, and to stop acting like it’s still 1999.

3. Consider whether their “no” responses are now heard as “please find a third party to provide what you need by way of technology enablement.”

4. Realize that employee and customer expectations have changed forever – call it consumerization or something else, the corporate IT game has to be upped considerably across services and apps, devices, speed of change, support, business understanding, etc.

5. Flip IT’s design and delivery thinking to start with the customer/consumer use case not the technological capability.

For me these, and similar points, are the required foundation for the IT evolution needed to stop the gradual erosion, and the ultimate extinction, of the corporate IT organization as we know it now.

About the Author:

Sarah Lahav is CEO and former VP of Customer Relations at SysAid Technologies.