Debate: Will traditional IT departments be extinct by 2012?

In a debate at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo Emerging Trends (April 2007), nearly 40% of the delegates agreed that most traditional IT organizations will be closed down by 2012. (Notice the qualifiers most and traditional.) The debate was recently summarized in Gartner report G00152198, which I'm further summarizing here.

The main arguments FOR the proposition to eliminate the traditional IT organization were: Traditional IT is in a mess and needs radical change. It will split into three new segments: the business solution office, the infrastructure utility, and the innovation group.

The main arguments AGAINST the dissolution of the traditional IT organization were that one organization needs to handle "strategic integration" (i.e., act as systems integrator), and that technology isn't getting any easier to implement, so we'll still need a centralized shop to do that.

BEFORE the debate, 27% of the delegates agreed with the shut-em-down proposition, 57% disagreed (and 16% were undecided). AFTER the debate, 37% agreed that most traditional IT organizations will be closed by 2012, 59% disagreed (and 4% were undecided). It was a pretty big swing in opinion, once folks understood the proposition better.

Gartner's post-debate conclusion is that the future will be something in the middle of the two extremes -- which still means IT departments will undergo big changes in the next five years. Gartner's bottom line:

How enterprises manage technology will diverge more during the next five years than in the past 15.

Although continuing unchanged is not a viable option, complete closure seems unlikely, except in a minority of situations. Significant transformation away from traditional IT organization models is, however, the future that awaits most IT organizations.