An economic crisis tends to accelerate changes that were already undergoing. In ordinary circumstances, these changes take the form of successive adjustments. In crisis, they accelerate and become potentially disruptive.

What are these disruptions in the world of IT?

First, the boundaries of business and technology are getting blurred. As Forester Research indicated, "over the next five years business will become so deeply embodied in technology, and the technology so deeply embedded in the business, that IT will need to be managed quite differently." It even has a name: business technology (or BT for short).

The second change affects the very careers of IT professionals, and is related to the first point. IT no longer exists as a distinct discipline (except for a few highly specialized technical skills). Just look at the IT job postings: there is hardly any that doesn?t require well-rounded industry or functional experience, such as in finance, marketing, banking, or telecom. The "IT guy" as we know it will soon be extinct. And this is not a bad thing. Too often, for too long, IT has been pursued for the sake of technology instead of being soundly tight to business processes and objectives. The pressure generated by the crisis forces IT to clearly add significant value to the processes it is supposed to support (yes, IT is actually a supporting process). It affects not only how we "do" IT, but also how IT professionals communicate the value of IT to stakeholders. Get ready for that. Better: look forward to that!

Third and last, platforms, devices, operating systems, and so on, are becoming no more (and no less) than channels through which IT delivers value to users. Platform is becoming irrelevant to the clients and to the users and that, too, is a good thing. It allows focusing on what really matters: the value IT brings to people and to organizations.