Just recently I came across a Knowledge13 conference keynote speech by Frank Slootman, CEO of ServiceNow, a company that is making giant steps in revolutionizing the IT System management. Here are some takeaways.

The corporate IT became the “Department of No” and CIOs the “Abominable No-Man”. It is not because they are obstructive, but because moving forward imprudently could mean cross-company chaos far beyond anyone’s Y2K fears.

The goal of modern corporate IT is moving it’s focus from infrastructure-centric to service-oriented. Today IT is spending most of the effort on handling the infrastructure, but soon enough the infrastructure will be someone else’s problem and the IT has to move to managing and enabling service relationships throughout the enterprise.

Today IT environments are fractured and segmented. They are over-staffed and under-automated, and thus struggling to keep up with the most basic tasks. What is needed is a unifying infrastructure that will enable IT to consolidate, consumerize and automate system management processes and enable the fundamental shift from “infrastructure operators” to business partners. Where CIOs once focused on cost, they’re looking at growth. Where they once looked at efficiency, they’re now looking at speed and customer satisfaction. They’ve moved from worrying about the user interface to worrying about the user experience.