Economy of Scale Might Inspire Companies to Ditch IT Departments

Among the technorati, journalist Nicholas Carr is infamous for his 2003 article in the Harvard Business Review declaring that information technology was no longer a significant source of corporate competitive advantage. Carr’s assertion challenged not only the received wisdom from a generation of strategy consultants, but also the marketing campaigns of every hardware and software vendor and thousands of newly minted "chief information officers."

While Carr may have overstated his point a bit, it was well received by chief executives who always suspected they were spending too much, or getting too little, out of all those expensive technology investments they approved.

Wednesday, 11 a.m. ET
Business: Corporate Computing
Washington Post business columnist Steven Pearlstein will be online to discuss author Nicholas Carr’s argument that companies are shifting to a model in which they purchase computers, software and components as a service from utility providers.

Now Carr is back with an equally controversial notion — the death of the corporate IT department — that he launched in the spring issue of MIT’s Sloan Management Review and is now peddling in speeches to business groups and industry conferences.

By Steven Pearlstein

Full Story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/29/AR2005112901096.html?referrer=email