Following the theme of my last post, Kevin Efrusy of Accel Partners has recently made some comments about the types of companies his firm is funding today. In it, he says that his VC firm is making investments in companies who are skipping IT and selling technology directly to workers. Most important is his statement that he believes that this is how most software will enter the enterprise in the future.
I'm not sure if I completely agree, but it is certainly a sign of where things are going. I believe that we will always have a need for a central IT organization that oversees standards and enterprise integrations. But the question is really whether or not IT will become mere caretakers of the plumbing or innovation leaders.
I believe that the harder IT holds on to rigid standards and a big project approach to software implementations, the more that innovation will be driven from outside the organization and by the business itself. We will see the emergence of two distinct classes of IT organization: maintenance organizations, with their bureaucracy and rigid approach to IT - and what I call Market Driven IT organizations - innovators who break down barriers, create highly flexible and adaptive IT architectures and are constantly looking for ways to drive revenue growth, employee productivity, competitive advantage and market share through technology.
Comments