Around 2005 I wrote a series of blog entries (starting here) asking if an enterprise IT could be completely covered by SaaS applications (the word cloud wasn't used then so I talked about a "virtual enterprise"). Gartner now predict that "By 2012, 20 percent of businesses will own no IT assets".
Disregarding if 2012 is the right time-frame, what type of enterprise could dispense with all of their IT assets. I can only assume one in which IT offers no competitive advantage.
Looking back on those old blog posts, I also noticed that a lot of the SaaS companies I mentioned either don't exist anymore or have morphed into something else. If you believed in 2005 that you could dispense with IT assets, then by now you would have realised that you need to be capable of moving your information assets to different SaaS providers and adapting your business processes accordingly. This is probably still true in 2010 and will be something to consider by the 20% of "IT free" companies in 2012.
