My as-seen-on-TV defence of IT managers

I don’t always need to have the last word. But in this case, I wish I’d at least managed to get a few more in.

Late last week I agreed to appear on TV Ontario’s The Agenda with Steve Paikin, a current affairs program that was devoting a full hour to stories about the IT industry. My segment, a panel discussion, was about cloud computing and its impact on businesses and consumers. Alongside me were Mathew Ingram of the Globe and Mail, Nicholas Carr (via satellite from Boston) and Jesse Hirsh, a technology analyst. Things were going well until we’d gotten past the basic definitions of what cloud computing was and how it gave users a lot more access to their own applications. That’s when Paikin (one of the nicest people I’ve ever met in broadcasting), popped the big one.

“So would it be safe to say that a lot of people in the IT industry aren’t happy about this?”

Uh-oh, I thought. So that’s why I’m on this show.

 

I said that even if users managed to start accessing data and software through the cloud, there would likely remain a key role for IT managers to offer guidance and direction on strategic technology decisions. Carr, who is promoting his book The Big Switch, drove home his boilerplate thesis: that IT doesn’t really matter, that cloud computing or utility computing renders its practitioners redundant and that yes, a lot of jobs are likely to be lost. I countered that most of an IT manager’s time is spent today troubleshooting and that they would welcome a chance to spend more on innovation.

Carr granted that some expertise may be needed but sniffed, “I don’t see cloud computing allowing people to sit around thinking big thoughts.”

Hirsh, who was by far the most seasoned guest on the panel in terms of broadcast experience (Paiken described him to me as a “huge media slut” just before taping began) took things up a notch. He said cloud computing would finally bring an end to IT department tyranny.

“These are the ‘no’ people in the organization,” he said. “This is a chance to finally get rid of the controlling IT department and open up a new era in IT management.”

I tried to fight back. Really, I did. Users don’t necessarily find all of these things easy to use, I pointed out. Support issues were a real mystery in many cases. Pricing remains vague, and businesses may get squeezed by the computing utilities of the future the way they do by their electrical counterparts today. As Hirch himself pointed out, users have proven they can’t be trusted to securely use applications, and he admitted that corporate information could more easily be lost as part of this transition.

But here’s the thing about TV: You get your say, someone else gets theirs, and the host moves on. The issue of the IT department’s future was but one facet of a half-hour general discussion. And even if I’d managed to convince the rest of the panel that, much like the movement from mainframe to client-server more than 20 years ago, fears of massive IT job losses are probably exaggerated, what point would it have served? IT managers know they contribute a lot more than policy policing to their organizations. End users watching The Agenda might dream of doing an end-run from technology professionals they don’t like, but there are probably a lot more who don’t trade in those kind of stereotypes.

While The Agenda (and my co-panelists) will move onto other topics, IT departments are part of a long-running series of their own that mostly operates behind the scenes. I’m confident they’ll prove my point more effectively than my sound bites ever could.