You forgot about the game changers
In 1981, when I was in high school, the first IBM PC hit the streets. Commodore CS/M, the TRS 80 Model III, and the Apple II were selling, but not going viral like the PC did.
About 1986, when I was in college trying to get a computing degree, Windows first hit the PC. The Macintosh was already selling well, but not going viral like Windows quickly did. Apple is doing well today, but the Windows product combined with the open design of the PC dominated the market worldwide for a long time.
In 1991 when I was picking up some advanced computing courses at college, nobody even knew what the Internet was. Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) and CompuServe were all the rage, but weren't taking the world over like the Internet has. Although, AOL gave it a shot.
And, nobody thought that processing power would ever be so fast that the CPU would sit idle for most of the time. Enter virtualization. And, now the cloud services model.
The point is you can't predict what's coming. You just can't know what's going to catch fire much less when. There's too many unknowns. Heck, the knowns are dang near impossible to forecast beyond a few months!
This notion that IT is dead as we know it is a misstatement at best, and a flagrant attempt to influence decision makers at worst. It's not dead. It's evolving - like it always has. Anyone who has been around the business long enough knows that.
On a final note, it seems that some believe in a world where it's either local staff doing IT or it's all outsourced. Well, there's a third option. Managed services. Anyone who's had to deal with outsourcing will tell you that if you outsource the wrong parts it's death. Outsource the stuff you don't do well internally, keep the rest in house, and use managed services where needed. And, even that is fluid because the workforce changes, the economy rises and falls, and the next big game changer is right around the corner.
There is hope! Hard times breeds innovation.
