Is IT's Credibility Crisis the Reason CIOs are Turning to Procurement?

Is IT’s Credibility Crisis the Reason CIOs are Turning to Procurement?

By Jason Busch on December 7, 2009

: Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Over on Horses for Sources, Phil Fersht recently added fuel to the argumentative fire that IT is becoming less and less relevant inside many organizations. In this post, he suggests that IT outsourcing, the primary reason behind the rebound in services businesses, is further marginalizing nearly all levels of IT in the organization. Here he notes that “much of the bottom-layer of IT has already been contracted out” and “it’s now the middle layer of IT professionals which is under threat.” Moreover, “CIOs are under pressure to prove the value of maintaining these heavy middle-layers, or move them out of the organization.” Phil further suggests that those CIOs that survive “will need to train their staff to think out-of-the-box, to learn how to work more effectively with the business units, and to bring technologies into the organization that can truly impact the business and the corporate culture.”