Mash ups and Widgets (not Wash ups and midgets)

Today I met with a friend of a friend, who works in the more one of the more tangential parts of the international finance business. In conversation, I mentioned how important I have found that it is to me to work in organisations where I have an interest and affinity with the products or services that the organisation provides.
The banker's response to this was that that didn't seem important – none of his IT people seemed to know the first thing about banking or finance, there were loads of them, and they seemed to get by without the industry knowledge.
As we enter into a world of commoditized, service-delivered IT, where the technology part is largely obscured from the end client, understanding the nature of the business in which it is operating is the only thing that an internal IT department can do to add any value (and justify its existence).
In a world where major business systems providers advertise directly to the departments in enterprises that they target, and where “no need for the IT department” is a key sales pitch, CIO's are under threat like never before. The Mash-Ups and Widgets world of browser-delivered apps means that the rest of the business increasingly don't need IT.
At Imagination we are now about 15% into our migration onto the Google Apps platform. The lack of technical challenges (other than data migration) has meant that we can focus most of our attention on helping the business to get the most from the technology that we are deploying. “Training”, often an oversight, and frequently the subject of budget cuts when the traditional big ticket items on IT projects has turned into a real, deep programme of organisational and culture change… because my team can focus on that rather than the complexities of installing servers, software and networks.
I've no doubt that my company could have implemented Google without the IT team. But I'm also convinced that by centring our remit on improving how the company uses technology, we're doing this in a way that shows how an internal IT group really can add value.