Is there an identity crisis in IT?

Do IT folks understand where they fit in the organization these days?

"No, we don't. I'm totally lost down here." Alex Ayotte, systems project administrator for a state agency in Florida

"I don't see it. From the bottom up, we understand what our place is. For the most part, we know who we are and what we are. But the good old days are gone and we just have to get over that. Let's say that IT doesn't have an identity crisis, IT is maturing." Greg Shields, senior systems engineer for a large defense contractor in Colorado

"Based on the feedback that we've gotten in chat rooms and the like, I can see that there's a lot of defensiveness. Not knowing exactly how or whether they're going to fit into the organization of the future is very much part of that. If that's how you're going to define identity crisis, I would agree with that." Diane Morello, vice president and research director, Gartner

"As far as in corporate America, I don't know. Within our organization, IT is highly valued." Bill Miller, manager of desktop services, Nevada County, California.

"There is an identity crisis in IT. I'm going to sound biased because of my programmer background, but I'm still a believer in custom development. Programmers have fallen into this role of technical glue, patching together off-the-shelf programs." Bruce Gauthier, programmer-analyst, Nevada County, California

"I kind of feel that. There's still lingering dot-com crash effects." David Goebel, Web developer for a state unemployment agency

"Depending on how we lead and manage IT, a number of things could happen. We could marginalize ourselves, and find ourselves as just brokers of technology services for the business, talking with external service providers. But there's a bigger role for the IT organization to play. Rather than seeing things like offshoring and external service providers and automation as threats, these are truly opportunities to shift our influence by being able to focus on things that matter more to the organization. So to answer the question, yes, I think there is an identity crisis, because there's a lot of things in play." Susan Cramm, president, Valuedance, California.

"On an individual basis, that might be true. Overall, in the industry as a whole, I don't think there's an identity crisis." Tim Hudson, principal business technical analyst III for a Fortune 100 healthcare company

"I think it's absolutely true. The thing that's exacerbating it is outsourcing." Ken Rau, adjunct professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and independent consultant

"There is in the industry. In the 1990s CIOs got way too much credit for success. After the new millennium, CIOs got way too much blame for the downturn. Now we're trying to come out of that." Lance Perry, vice president of IT customer strategy and success, Cisco

"It'd probably be not unreasonable for the IT pros of the world to have an identity crisis, owing to concern about outsourcing. . . .The days of IT for the sake of IT are over. There is some amount of angst regarding the new direction of IT, which is really about how to solve business problems." Ed Kamins, chief operational excellence officer, Avnet

Desmond is president of PDEdit in Massachusetts, U.S. He can be reached at paul@pdedit.com.