Maybe, but what is stopping a third party who supports lets say a competitor of yours and then gets offered to trade information for money. If only the third party has access and no one internally does, then who is going to make sure all data and assets are secure?

If you are going to have someone audit the third party you might as well just have one in house. At least then you can manage them by company policy and it is in the employee's best interest to do a good job for promotion and so they don't get fired.

Its a huge security loop hole, read up on some Kevin Mitnick.

The same thing that stops you from selling information to a competitor.
That may be, but it has already happened as there are lots of co-location farms out there now, and the trend will continue to grow.

Sure that is a niche market though. Data centers and data hosting services are nothing new, they have been around for a long time. That is only a small part of IT though.

The article uses that to say that eventually end users will take care of everything. I don't see that happening in my life time.

It's a niche that keeps growing, and although it's been around a long time, relatively recent developments make it much more appealing to businesses. High speed internet access, for example, is almost to the point where you can get to your server from anywhere. By the time the last 56K modem is finally shut off, it may not be a niche market anymore.

I don't see users taking care of everything either, but I do see them logging into online tech support and getting their answers from somebody who may be half a world away. They do it in these forums every day!

Sure, I can totally see level one and first response tech support being out sourced because no one wants to do it, as well as no one wants to put in their time any more either. They just want to get hired at a high level position.

However, I still think that a good percentage of companies will keep things internals.

Which companies? The ones that have sent entire divisions off shore so they can pay pennies per hour? As companies in the 80s and 90s sent blue collar jobs off shore, middle management thought it was safe. Today we see that they aren't safe, and as their jobs move, fewer servers and desktops are needed here. If you're willing to ship manufacturing, marketing, and tier 1 support to another country, I don't know what would stop you from moving server administration to a server farm and using their tech support.

I suppose there is also the argument that centralised data storage can be better managed from a green perspective

The Green Grid

You always have to have someone on site to crank a screw driver, replace hardware, run cables, do physical work, deploy, etc. If you are a organization/company that is constantly changing, you can't just roll out new software remotely and call it good to go. I needs to be configured, tested on your equipment in your infrastructure. Like I said, yes, I agree with you lots of stuff can be done remotely but its not a viable solution for everything. Very easily can you test something out over seas on your network and then deploy it on another network and it not work. Then what? Remote troubleshooting?

I don't think the world economy will support out sourcing for too long either from western business. I mean China is already booming as well as India and most of Asia is following. I just got done watching a documentary on main land china the other day. It said something crazy like 6,000 cars are being shipped into Shanghai every day. Their economy is growing and socially they are changing. I look at is as they are changing socially like we did from the 1940s to present, but instead of doing it in 70 years they will do it in 10 to 15. Plastic surgery is already a very common thing over in Asia and it is every where. Teaching English over there is a huge job. I have two friends in Vietnam right now teaching english and they are getting paid well, and almost all their expenses are covered. So, what happens when their economy catches up with the rest of the world and they have a highly educated english speaking work force? They will build their own companies and their own enterprises. Then it won't be affordable anymore.

Correct centralized data is great for many reasons, not just saving power. With the cost of running a SAN I can see that being outsourced, until the technology is so cheap and more efficient that a small cluster of servers can do the same thing.

There will always be another poor area where they can get cheap labor to turn the screws or run cable. Those things won't be done here.

My father in-law told me a story about an old fisherman and a young fisherman. The old fisherman said that there aren't any big fish to be caught anymore. The young fisherman said, "Not true! I caught a 75 pounder the other day." The old fisherman replied that in the old days a big fish was at least 200 pounds.

My point is that everything is relative. IT today is smaller than it was in the 80s, and it will be smaller still in twenty years. Gone? Probably not, but if you could take an IT guy from 1988 and transport him to 2028, I think he'd take one look at IT and pronounce it dead.

I've always worked as outsourced IT, except for one 16-month stint in-house (which I'd never do again). Some say it's not viable because you want to reach someone immediately if you need help. Some say in-house support is not viable because you want to reach someone immediately if you need help... The in-house guys take vacations and such, while outsourced organizations typically make sure to provide an SLA and backup staff. Right now I work for a number of companies who depend on me completely for all of their technical work, from phone systems to networks to video. In about half of them we replaced an in-house person or two. In every case, the in-house guy was stuck at a learning level and not progressing, and we bring in a fresh view with higher knowledge of technology. It started to happen to me when I worked for one company; you stop looking for other technologies and options, focusing only on what is used in your current situation. It's easy then to be out-innovated by an outsourced guy.

The Ghost of IT Past:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRBIVRwvUeE