I'm at DEMOfall '06...the semi-annual emerging technology show of choice for the last 15 years. Chris Shipley...highly respected excecutive producer opened the show today with some comments. I happen to resonate with them. Her comments (and incredible wisdom in this field of emerging software and hardware innovation) are relatively indisputable.

I quote her below from her 2006 show-opening keynote address, and point to our IAOC discussion about outsourced content management and the issue of whether an internal IT team should be in charge of we implementation across an entire organization.

Shipley said this morning, "The same design values that make consumer web services and applications so appealing are also working their way into enterprise applications. In fact, enterprise software is rapidly taking on the characteristics of consumer software, and individual lines of business managers are taking charge of the tools that help them acheive their business objectives. Increasingly, we'll see the role of the application specifier move from the IT out to the business user who, by virtue of web-based architecture and consumer-like business software design, will be empowered to choose the tools that best help them acheive their business results.

The shift is both empowering to those responsible for driving business and liberating to an emerging new "IT role." In time, the IT organization will transform from end-to-end systems manager to infrastructure architect and provider and the "term" IT will itself be redefined to mean not Information Technology but Infrastructure Technology."

To read the entire keynote of this savvy and forward-thinking woman, go here. It's housed...oh by the way...in our third-party hosted MediaRoom technology provided to DEMOfall '06. Not because their IT team isn't smart enough to do a MediaRoom for the show, but because our "templated" MR site offered real value add to the show producer's PR team. Imagine that.