Well, without getting in a big debate, you make a number of good points that
probably weren't sufficiently covered by my cautions. I do think that the
potential gains are more in what's traded off than a reduction in IT labor. In
my experience (and I have some in this area), the hosted apps have been less of
an IT help desk concern than the in-house apps, probably from a mix of more
intuitive web interfaces (which, yes, are tied to less powerful interfaces - IT
is asked to help less because less can be done) and a perception that this is
not an IT provided service (again, not necessarily a good thing). I will tell
you that, a number of year's ago, moving from a local install of Raiser's Edge
to Etapestry became an almost total drop of IT responsibilities. On the other
hand, rolling out Salesforce was still very much an IT project, and ended up
generating a greater internal demand, which was largely because we suddenly had
a tool that could do far more things than our in-house technology ever did.

My overall point, like yours, is that outsourcing, or moving to hosted apps (a
form of outsourcing) is a strategic decision that changes the way IT works. It
is not an assumed reduction in IT dependency. Done rightl, it requires that
your IT staff become better integrators, developers and business strategists
than they are plumbers.

Peter Campbell
IT Director, Earthjustice
http://www.earthjustice.org
"Because the earth needs a good lawyer"

Website/Blog: http://techcafeteria.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/peterscampbell

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