Joe McKendrick, contributing editor to Database Trends
and Applications magazine, quotes Robert Reid, group vice president for Oracle’s CRM On Demand service in a recent blog entry on
SaaS adoption:

“Most IT organizations spend 70 to 80 percent of their time updating, patching, and maintaining applications,’ said Reid. ‘Where I think the real value is being able to understand the business requirements, and then proposing, here’s the best way for the corporation to utilize technology to achieve their goals. SaaS allows IT to elevate itself into being business partners with line-of-business units. SaaS helps IT professionals to do what they really want to do the most - have an impact on the business, as opposed to just doing patches, and maintaining things, and upgrading systems.’

I think he’s dead on with both the facts and his assessment. Sys admins are a creative group who got into what they thought was cutting edge technology. Unfortunately, they’ve been bogged down in the morrass that we as an industry sold them with our “every problem can be solved with just another layer of management” methodology. (why we persue that course is an entry for another day)

When showing AppLogic to people for the first time customers often ask whether the reduction in time spent managing applications will result in layoffs. I think it’s just the opposite, IT people are inherently creative. Once free of dealing with servers and OS’s and middleware those skills will be freed for better use. For instance, we have numerous large-scale issues to solve as an industry as we convert once in-house applications to online services. How are these services connected. How are they secured. These are complex issues that will require creative solutions. Therefore, as we make that transition, I expect employment will actually go up.