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What will business leaders expect from the IT organization of the future? According to consulting firm Gartner, the IT scenario is changing rapidly and IT managers need to understand the new business-oriented roles they will be asked to fulfill, or face marginalization within their organizations.

“When we look out 10 to 15 years, we see a vastly different set of business expectations for IT,” says Barbara Gomolski, a Gartner research vice president. “Today, business expectations of IT are largely centered around supporting revenue growth and lowering the cost of doing business.

“Going forward, there will be many new opportunities for organizations to exploit IT for competitive advantage,” she predicts. “For example, IT will be a key component in organizational innovation in industries such as biotech, manufacturing and engineering. In financial services, IT will provide myriad new opportunities in the areas of analytics and informatics.”

Gomolski expects organizations will create new roles and titles for today’s IT professional, such as bio-informaticist, digital library specialist, human-computer interface designer, Internet multilinguist, artificial intelligence expert and cyber security expert.

“Organizations will continue to look to IS for reliable and low-cost IT infrastructure services,” Gomolski says. “They will also continue to drive improved organizational efficiency and business process optimization with IT. However, these traditional requirements will be augmented with a host of new requirements that will vary, depending on the industry in which the organization operates.”

Today’s typical IT responsibilities and operational tendencies, however, can tend to get in the way of such change, Gomolski contends. “Most business managers are bogged down with running day-to-day operations and meeting short-term goals,” she explains. “Getting them to do any long-term planning can be a challenge. Nevertheless, it is imperative that IS organizations consider what kind of organization they will build to support the IT needs of the future.”

Several external forces will help shape the IS organization of the future, according to Gartner research. Globalization, for example, is acting as the “great equalizer.” Former barriers, such as geography, are disappearing, allowing organizations to sell and compete globally.

In the next 15 years, Gomolski contends, there will be unprecedented opportunity to exploit information technology for competitive advantage. Or, IT really will not matter, and organizations will spend as little as possible in this area. Unfortunately, she says, many organizations are behaving as though the latter statement is true.

“The problem is not that organizations have ‘hit the wall’ in terms of their capability to use IT strategically,” she says. “On the contrary, we believe most organizations have enormous opportunities for IT-enabled improvements. However, the traditional view of IT as a mechanism for supporting and improving existing business processes is constraining the use–and the investment–in IT.

“In many ways, the IS organization is at a crossroads,” Gomolski adds. “If it continues as it is, it is likely to be minimized, squeezed and relegated to the keeper of the ‘IT utility.’ Similarly, IT managers who continue to define themselves in terms of their ability to manage technology will see their credibility and worth to the organization erode. This is already happening in many organizations today.

“This gloomy fate is not predetermined, however. IS organizations can evolve and play a key role in organizational success going forward. Doing so is going to be painful; not all IS organizations or individuals will find their place in the IS organization of the future. The transformation of today’s IS organization will require hard work and a clear understanding of how organizations will use IT going forward.”

Wireless use trending upward

Minneapolis is building a 59-square-mile broadband wireless network to cover the entire city, and while its deployment is perhaps on a grander scale than most, there is no denying that Wi-Fi and wireless mesh technologies are gaining greater traction across the country. Deployments range from entire school districts to corporate headquarters buildings, and all manner of other installations.

The Minneapolis citywide wireless initiative, known as “Wireless Minneapolis,” will result in one of the largest municipal Wi-Fi rollouts in the United States. City departments will utilize the wireless broadband network to improve public safety, boost employee productivity and cut costs. US Internet, a global Internet, hosting and application services provider, and Aptilo Networks, a supplier of service-management systems for Wi-Fi and WiMAX networks, have been contracted to build and operate the network.

In other wireless installations:

Semtech Corp., a supplier of semiconductors, has deployed triple play Wi-Fi technology at its corporate headquarters in Camarillo, Calif. The long-range, high-capacity platform from Xirrus can extend wired network capabilities to wireless.

“We needed a powerful wireless network that would stand on its own–provide the bandwidth needed for our corporate applications and make it easy for us to manage,” says Mike Panesis, vice president of IT for Semtech. “The solution has significantly increased our coverage, capacity and security to meet our growing user mobility needs.”

Semtech required a Wi-Fi solution that could connect traveling users to corporate services, providing them access to corporate IT resources when collaborating on projects throughout the 100,000-square-foot facility.

In Colleyville, Texas, a mesh wireless system is now being used by first responders and city services. The city will use the five-square-mile area network primarily to establish a wireless link between the city’s fire stations and the public works service center to the city backbone network. The network can support secure, high-speed wireless data, high-resolution streaming video and voice communications to first-responder vehicles. The solution incorporates mesh technology using Wi-Fi and is interoperable with other Wi-Fi 802.11 equipment.

Mesh wireless also is being deployed in campus settings, such as at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind. The university, named Intel’s “Most Unwired Campus” in 2005, deployed Firetide’s mesh solution to provide students with a variety of wireless services, including live video and a mobile network that allows continuous Internet access on the university’s shuttle bus service.

According to Vernon Draper, the university’s assistant director of computing, Ball State will look at the results and benefits of this test pilot, with the possibility of expanding the mesh network throughout campus, as well as adding nodes and cameras to additional shuttle buses in the future.

In another campus implementation, Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles has selected AirWave’s Management Platform software to manage its campus-wide wireless network. The university is now in the final stages of completing a campus-wide wireless network deployment that began more than two years ago.

Initially, the school installed primarily autonomous Cisco wireless access points. For later installations, the university elected to migrate to Cisco’s newer centralized wireless network architecture, with LWAPP access points and controllers, for increased capacity and security.

“While we’re migrating most of our access points to LWAPP via a software update, some of the devices cannot be converted and need to remain as standalone IOS access points,” says Gary Landau, Loyola Marymount’s director of network services. “The AirWave Management Platform gives us one common platform from which to manage all these devices.”

School districts also are installing wireless networks at a rapid pace. In New Castle, Ind., the New Castle School District is deploying the Meru Networks wireless LAN system across its district to enable its more than 4,000 students and 500 staff and faculty to access a broad range of wireless voice and data applications. When completed, the wireless deployment will span New Castle’s seven elementary schools, a middle school, high school and vocational school, the district’s administration building and its technology center.

With a wireless LAN and several mobile computer labs, New Castle can allow entire classrooms to use computing resources efficiently and cost-effectively, says Shawn Iverson, network administrator for the district. In addition, the district wanted a solution that could be used for both data and voice over IP, allowing staff to keep in touch as they move about the school’s campus during the workday.

SMBs ‘being left out’

The small and midsize business (SMB) market is the new battleground for converged communications solutions–at least according to research from the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) and Deloitte Consulting. Nearly one-third of the more than 350 SMBs surveyed by CompTIA say they intend to buy new phone systems or make a significant new investment in their current phone systems in the next 12 months. A survey conducted by Deloitte, however, says the SMB market is underserved at precisely the time these businesses are searching for solutions.

“SMBs are essentially being left out in the cold, despite their relatively high communications spending,” says Jan Woodcock, principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP. “Their unmet needs make them a potentially very attractive market sector.”

According to the Deloitte survey, there is a lack of appropriately scaled, affordable wireline service products for the SMB marketplace. â€œMany SMBs are too large to be satisfied with a T-1 line and too small to afford or to manage a DS-3 connection,” Woodcock adds.

Among the survey’s key findings:

• SMBs need tailored, scalable solutions that package voice, data and managed services at a competitive price. Because SMBs do not generate the same volume as large enterprises, negotiating better rates is difficult.

• Multisite SMBs are more IP centric, with more IP spending. Deloitte’s survey found that a company with a single site that spends $100 on voice spends an additional $27 on data. When the number of sites increases to between two and five, a company that spends $100 on voice spends $114 on data.

• As the number of sites increases, SMBs are more likely to turn to VoIP.