Fujitsu Siemens Computers, IT systems and services provider, is predicting that corporate IT departments will reduce by 50 per cent in size over the next decade.  The company believes that some sectors will see even further shrinkage of in-house IT teams, as companies look to consolidate their IT architectures and outsource activities that need specialist skills.

The first IT personnel to go will be those who connect devices and systems.  These jobs will become obsolete as fewer systems are consolidated, and people employed in this area will probably move out of IT.  The next level of IT jobs that will just disappear are the people who run the IT systems, these IT people will instead define policies so that systems will run automatically 24/7 without need for human intervention.

The evolution of IT in-house jobs means that, within a decade, many IT departments could be reduced to just a handful of individuals who will act as a management and co-ordinating team.  Their primary role will be to liaise with external suppliers, reporting back to the business and ensuring that appropriate levels of services are being delivered and the organisation’s needs are being met.

Dave Prichard, chief technologist at Fujitsu Siemens Computers commented: “IT departments of big corporates are set for a big shake-up.  This is being triggered by increasingly sophisticated dynamic allocation of resources with automated management enabling virtual “lights-out” operation of servers, storage, desktop and mobile computing estates. All of these resources can now be managed more cost-effectively by external suppliers with specialist operations, support and maintenance staff to achieve lower lifecycle costs.

IT infrastructures continue to increase in complexity, requiring skills that are further and further away from the core business of non-IT companies. The continual increase in the rate of change of technology will mean that it will not be possible for current IT departments to keep track of all the technology changes. They will have to rely on partnerships with specialists.

“Some sectors will see quite dramatic cuts in their IT departments, and it’s not unreasonable for companies in the utilities sector to see their in-house teams reduced to a tenth of their current size.  Banks will follow, although will probably be the slowest sector to reduce as they still have continued concerns about data security.”

Fujitsu Siemens Computers believes the inevitable higher usage of utility computing and organic, self-healing systems will lead to the development of a new kind of IT infrastructure that does not require a company to have an extensive or expensive internally-managed IT department.

Fujitsu Siemens Computers has seen rising sales of its own Dynamic Data Centre (DDC) solutions, which are built around its advanced BladeFrame and FlexFrame systems, combined with advanced storage options. It has also seen growing levels of interest in its Infrastructure Services business from large organisations looking to reduce their overall cost of managing and running the entire IT asset base, from servers and data centres, to desktop PCs and notebooks to point of sale terminals and workstations.

Dave Prichard continues: “We are confident in our prediction because we can see for ourselves the growing trend for customers to rely on external suppliers to provide virtually all their IT functions.  We believe that in the next 10 years this reliance will have reached a point where the internal resource can be kept to a minimum. This has profound implications, not only for IT personnel but for the industry as a whole and it is an issue that we all need to start thinking and talking about today.”