Nicholas Carr (formerly editor of the Harvard Business Review) seems to be on board the outsourcing train, albeit from a unique perspective. His view is that IT will become a centralized function provided by utilities, much like cable or electricity. However I find it hard to imagine companies looking at computers and technology investment merely as a cost of doing business like they would the electric bill. Electricity is either on or off - there are no grades of value to the end user. Good, up-to-date technology on the other hand has a far more variable impact on company performance and employee productivity. That is the essential difference from IT and utilities - IT provides both hardware and the network. Utilities typically only provide the network.

Utilities are the means not the end. Electricity does not require hardware, whereas hardware (computers) require electricity. Even as software becomes networked, hardware investment will continue to be a huge investment for companies and they will need people to make those purchase decisions. Here at Flat Creek, obviously we would like to see that function outsourced, but it’s hard to imagine it becoming centralized even as the global economy becomes more competitive. A more relevant analogy than electric utilities might be the phone industry, where utilities provide access to the lines while independent service providers install the phones, PBX systems, etc to access the lines. While the term “computer” is becoming more ubiquitous every day, it’s a far cry from becoming a utility.

Provocateur predicts ‘end of corporate computing’ CNET News.com