Provocative title, insightful article
The cloud has created a strange division in some companies with some claiming, as you say, that it could possibly eliminate the IT dept and with IT dept's reacting dismissively to these claims. You correctly reject both of these ideas for a more level-headed and moderate approach. The IT dept is not going anywhere, cloud services may be the way forward but people will still be needed to manage servers. On the other hand for some to claim that the cloud will have no affect is also wrong, the cloud will likely have some affect on the nature IT dept's but how great remains to be seen.