Gartner on Google and the Enterprise

So just how threatened is your traditional IT department by Google’s onslaught? That depends on what they value. Gartner’s Rich Hunter is quoted as saying:

Sanity check: Will the Google revolution engulf IT departments? | Tech Sanity Check | TechRepublic.com

“Google has the potential to be the first-choice provider of many services that are now handled by internal IT organizations, starting with non-competitively-differentiating services such as email (which Google already provides to a number of enterprises), and ultimately including high-value-added functions and services such as business intelligence, mobile sales support, and others. Some IT organizations might consider it a boon to pass these functions on to Google so that the IT department can concentrate on very enterprise-specific competitively differentiating applications. IT organizations that measure their worth in terms of how much of the company’s IT needs they supply themselves will be less happy to see Google move in on their turf-and I do mean specifically that in many cases it will be an argument about turf, not enterprise value.