Excuse me while I kiss a cloud

Nicholas Carr and others have argued (somewhat) persuasively about IT as an utility but it might be premature for most organizations to make the jump immediately. It is however the right time to start considering the strategic role of IT in organizations a few years from now when the cloud model is likely to have matured and established itself as a superior alternative to the traditional services that internal IT performs (much of it centered around building and managing core enterprise applications). Where would IT's competitive advantage lie in such a situation -- why should organizations continue to invest in IT when the 'cloud' beckons?

Here's a stab at a rough model that tries to project what the environment of large organizations might look like a few years from now. Given the rapidity of change, the model's likely to be overtaken by time before I hit 'publish' on this blog post, but here are a few ideas to consider --

• The cloud becomes an important part of an organization's landscape (like most of us agree it will)
• The organization carves a defined niche for itself in the cloud (say http://cloud.xyzzz.org or something akin to it depending on the device you are using) that provides an organization's internal and external stakeholders access to a large and evolving set of tools and data
• A nimble body including folks representing IT, legal, knowledge, strategy, others acts as the interface between the two 'clouds'
• IT focuses on common services (identity management, search, user histories, etc.) that unify different cloud services (but not integrate them; the emphasis should be on sharing and openness) -- and common data services, rather than on developing/maintaining applications

This is all rather raw at the moment (as the graphic undoubtedly proves) but here is opening it up to the cloud for further ideas!