The Corporate Executive Board (CEB) recently released a study, The Future of Corporate IT, that predicted: “The IT function of 2015 will bear little resemblance to its current state. Many activities will devolve to business units, be consolidated with other central functions, or be externally sourced. Fewer than twenty-five percent of employees currently within IT will remain.”

The CEB justifies this position based on the changes occurring today in IT. Namely, that IT is moving from a dedicated standalone function to IT services delivered in the cloud. The cloud enables externalization of applications and business services, positioning IT as a technology broker rather than a technology provider. Business unit leaders, rather than IT, will play a greater role in obtaining and managing technology themselves where differentiation and the competitive edge have the most value.

RightStar is well positioned in CEB’s vision for corporate IT. Here are three reasons why:

ITIL v3. By now everyone is familiar with the ITIL blueprint for service delivery. In order to reorient IT around service delivery, ITIL will be the logical framework. Thus, ITIL adoption will become even more important and demand should increase for RightStar ITIL consulting and training.

Software as a Service. RightStar offers BMC’s Remedy OnDemand and ServiceDesk on Force.com configurable, scalable ITSM services. Customizations may be minimal but organizations will still require consulting, training, and configuration assistance.

The service desk becomes more pervasive, not less. The service desk function and ITIL processes such as Incident and Change Management are shared across all business services, not just IT. This validates the BMC BSM approach except that the IT department is no longer the center of the universe. Instead, IT may offer shared BSM services.

Cloud computing and virtualization are forcing IT service providers to become more agile, which may create some resistance to the regimented and process-oriented ITIL framework. Therefore it is important to layer automation and efficiency on top of the ITIL processes that lend stability and necessary governance to the business. RightStar will continue to deliver this message and work hard at developing solutions for the business, not just IT.