Adam Killam from SalesforceTimes.com posted an interesting discussion. “Cloud computing making IT redundant? Experts weigh in”. He kindly asked us for our comments and this is our response.

There is no doubt that on demand computing is going to continue to chip away at the IT department. The traditional job of operational IT was to troubleshoot hardware problems, maintain servers, deploy software, etc. SaaS emerges and presents a very compelling value proposition because it solves this problem for all businesses. These traditional jobs are becoming commoditized and what happens to work that’s not part of our core competency? It gets outsourced. Many small businesses have limited budgets and their core competency is not IT. Even to set up a small network for 10 users to collaborate would blow the bank. From my experience as a Salesforce.com Consultant, I have found that most small to medium sized businesses rarely have an IT person let alone department. Instead, Salesforce.com allows them to designate a specific power user as their administrator. So now your administrator is much more than just an ‘IT person’; he/she can also add value through other roles in sales or marketing for example.

More after the jump.

With that being said, we should still expect to find the traditional IT department in some businesses. If the core business revolves heavily around an IT solution, then the IT department will not be replaced. Large banks, credit card companies, insurance companies might be reluctant to switch because they have very specialized and complex business processes. More importantly, their data may be locked in proprietary legacy systems and business interruptions might be too costly or risky. Legal issues might also be a factor.

The future of the IT department, the way we see it, will be in smaller teams. Most operational IT will be gone, but solution developers will not be. IT will no longer be made up of pure technical employees. There will be more focus on mapping business processes to technology. SaaS allows employees to implement solutions by pointing and clicking without being technologically savvy. You’ll most likely see less and less DBAs and Network Admins and more and more Business Analysts and Project Mangers in IT.