Future of Retained IT in Non-IT Companies

All below content is written by me to express my personal views only.

The general view is that over the period of time there will be only a handful of Retained IT people who will be acting just like a communicator between Business and IT Vendor. Technology transformation is also playing a vital role in this kind of approach. However, in this situation, the source of IT demand lies in the hand of people who do not have the realities of cost, complexity, Timelines, and most importantly empathy of any side. Along with this, there will also be a big question on what should be the measurement of success of the retained IT as well, because in this model they don't own the solutions or services.

But my view is that what all trend of outsourcing we are observing these days are just the initial steps to do a complete re-organization at the enterprise level. This gives CXO to focus more on business and then again in-house IT as the defined need of Business. There are several factors like Agility, Adaptability, Common goals, objectives, and many others which suggest that not only Strategic but Tactical layers should lie within in-house IT. Differentiator from the competitors (People, Process & Technology) also is another reason that why it should be more than a thin layer in-house IT.

Change is the only constant hence there will be a change in the way of working of IT whether In-House IT or Out Sourced IT, Thin or Thick as overall this is a roller coaster of Continous Service Improvement, where doing an experiment and gaining experience is never going to stop.