IT Infrastructure as a service

My final comment on Gartner's '08 predictions.

This will come to pass just as purchasing software as a service is becoming more common place. This change will impact how we run I.T., how we deploy our resources and who we hold accountable for service.

By 2011, early technology adopters will forgo capital expenditures and instead purchase 40 per cent of their IT infrastructure as a service. Increased high-speed bandwidth makes it practical to locate infrastructure at other sites and still receive the same response times. Enterprises believe that as service oriented architecture (SOA) becomes common "cloud computing" will take off, thus untying applications from specific infrastructure. This trend to accepting commodity infrastructure could end the traditional "lock-in" with a single supplier and lower the costs of switching suppliers. It means that IT buyers should strengthen their purchasing and sourcing departments to evaluate offerings. They will have to develop and use new criteria for evaluation and selection and phase out traditional criteria.

See all of Gartner's prediction in my earlier post (Gartner's 10 Key Predictions) or at http://gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=593207.