Every cloud has a silver lining

Reasons to be cheeful

As the latest economic reports confirm, US retailers are hurting. Americans’ expectations of easy credit have come to a crashing halt; the big spenders have become penny pinchers. With consumer spending plummeting, seismic changes in that particular market are inevitable.

But this is hardly revelatory and with more pressing problems of their own, IT leaders could easily be forgiven for not giving too much attention to the plight of shopkeepers across the Atlantic. Nevertheless, looking at their predicament, I think we can all draw some comfort.

It is still too early to make predictions about how a dramatic change in US spending habits will play out, so I won’t. But those organisations that are prepared -­ the ones able take decisive actions quickly -­ are the ones that will emerge stronger. I think that is instructive because there can be little doubt that momentous change is on the IT horizon too.

And while it would be wrong to suggest that the state of the global economy will be entirely good news for IT leaders, it need not be the calamity that some industry watchers are predicting.

The IT function has had to evolve continually. For example, outsourcing and offshoring have become routine -­ and often cost-saving ­- activities that changed the face of IT departments. IT leaders have become well drilled in identifying core functions, and those that can be passed to third parties.

For the past few years, virtualisation has been at the front of many IT chiefs’ minds. The ideas of doing more with less, trimming the fat, have become deeply ingrained in today’s IT strategies. That means many IT departments will enter what will be challenging times in good shape.

In fact, it does not matter how far IT departments are in terms of implementing virtualisation technology, or whether the organisation has established a transglobal network of IT workers, or has kept the IT team intact. What matters most is the mindset.

For those pitiable US retailers, one of the biggest challenges is that the change in customer behaviour has been so dramatic. Guessing how these reformed free-spenders will behave now is not easy.

In IT, the discipline of seeking out inefficiencies in the infrastructure has become part of working life. The fact that the belt-tightening may become more painful need not disguise an opportunity.

IT chiefs who can demonstrate leadership in reining in costs while maintaining a first-class service will burnish their reputation within the organisation.

It is inevitable that IT will be pressed to continue its evolution. Indeed, some industry watchers foresee the end of the IT department as we know it, as businesses migrate en masse to the cloud.

The hype around cloud computing was ratcheted up another notch by Microsoft’s recent Windows Azure announcement. Microsoft’s view on cloud computing is, of course, predictable -­ after all, it has a vested interest in prolonging the shelf life of on-premises software, while knowing it has to have some form of cloud computing offering to stay in the game. But its argument, that cloud computing will complement existing IT infrastructure, holds some water nonetheless.

In straitened times, the promise of making IT a more predictable cost to the business can begin to look appealing. And cloud computing can potentially tick some of those boxes.

But for IT departments, that need not spell doom. It offers IT leaders another tool to demonstrate their cost-trimming prowess. And it is that ability to harness those technologies capable of enhancing the business that will not only preserve the status of the IT department, but demonstrate why good IT leaders are an integral part of those organisations.