In the ‘Future’ chapter of my book, I mused on the future of the in-house IT department – echoing comments made months ago by Silicon.com columnist Peter Cochrane. Today, a Silicon.com item reports that Gartner is also making similar predictions. We are about to enter a period of radical change for IT departments, Gartner says, which will see "at least three-quarters of IT departments change their role with 10 per cent completely disbanded and 10 per cent relegated to commodity status."
This news may be welcomed by some AEC (architecture, engineering and construction) people, who often have a very dim view of the capabilities of their in-house IT people. Too often, they are regarded as obstacles which have to be won round to new innovations (such as extranets, for example), rather than being facilitators looking for solutions to improve the process of delivering modern projects.
