"... Get the Client to Not Use Corporate IT ..."

In one of the talks at tonight's San Francisco Drupal User's Group meeting David from Razortooth Communications gave some interesting advice. The audience for the 20 minute site showcase probably did not find anything Earth shattering in the presentation, but considering the focus on Razortooth's client, PARC, a long reigning Silicon Valley tech establishment, I found the advice illuminating...

"TRY TO GET THE CLIENT TO NOT USE CORPORATE IT HOSTING"

PARC's IT department, like those at many mature technology driven enterprises, does not readily abdicate IT control to a band of developers with a new idea. Just last week I was reminded of this when I presented on the topic of cloud computing to a group of IT managers at another large tech company. When I asked if they saw the relationship between developers and IT changing, one manager said simply, "They have to get their IT resources through us." His colleague then quipped, "and they wear knee pads".

With attitudes in IT like this, it's not surprising that application developers are increasingly circumspect about the traditional model of centralized IT services. Precious time lost to the traditional IT cycle of procurement, receiving, and provisioning, and the constraints of working within a corporate standard type and size of infrastructure drives developers to avoid corporate IT. The innovators among them will find other ways to get the job done. What was once jerry rigged on (mis)appropriated corporate assets is giving way to another more efficient form of ad hoc infrastructure: cloud computing services.

It's clear to anyone developing in open source communities like Drupal, that traditional IT is becoming less relevant by the day. What is less clear is whether corporate IT departments can survive the shift toward self service, pay-as-you-go infrastructure by emulating those traits within their own data centers, or if they'll further alienate developers with draconian measures or declaring virtualization to be a satisfactory compromise that ultimately does less to enable innovation and more to perpetuate the status quo.