The primary function of IT is evolving

An ode to my dear friends in IT.

By Jarom+

I’ve spent the last 15 years working alongside highly technical people, and I want to be super clear up front… I am not one you. I respect you all too much to do that. I'm approaching this ode from a perspective that I hope will be helpful to those who are navigating the profound shift AI is having on the information technology profession.

My background is in advertising, communications, and marketing. My work sits at the intersection of organizational change and human behavior. I focus on how people experience change—how they react to it, resist it, adapt to it, and ultimately integrate it into how they work and who they become.

Over time, I’ve learned to speak enough of the technical language to get by. I don’t understand everything. But I understand enough to observe patterns. And for the past several years, my team and I have had a front-row seat to one of the most significant shifts in enterprise technology in decades. 

We partner closely with one of the world’s largest technology companies, a company actively shaping how millions of organizations build and operate their IT environments. As both a supplier and a partner, we see how AI is actually being adopted, not in theory, but in practice. We see the excitement, the experimentation, the confusion, and the pressure.

And lately, I’ve been reminded of something from earlier in my life. 

I grew up in New Zealand, where rugby isn’t just a sport, it is an integral element of a sensitive and well preserved ecosystem. I personally never played an official game, but I did get my bell rung many times during lunch time at school and on the beach playing with my mates. I remember the feeling of catching the ball, looking up to see someone much larger, faster, and more determined charging directly at me. There’s a moment when time compresses. You realize you’re responsible for what happens next, but you don’t yet know what the right decision is. Pass too early, and you lose control. Hold on too long, and you absorb the hit. Hesitate, and the opportunity disappears entirely.

It’s not just physical pressure. It’s decision pressure.

That feeling has come back to me recently… thankfully not literarily. Because it’s similar to what I'm seeing across IT organizations. The ball has been passed by leadership, there is massive expectation, and the environment has changed. Dramatically.

The environment shapes the role

There is a concept in biology called epigenetics. It explains how environmental factors influence how genes are expressed—without changing the underlying DNA itself. 

Identical twins provide one of the clearest examples. They begin life with exactly the same genetic blueprint. But when twins are separated early and raised in different environments—different geographies, different lifestyles, different stresses—their development diverges. Over time, they may look different, behave differently, and develop different capabilities or health outcomes.

Their DNA didn’t change. Their environment did. And that environment shaped how their genes were expressed. 

Organizations work the same way. They have structural DNA—roles, responsibilities, systems, and patterns of operation that evolve over time to match the environment in which they operate. These roles are not static. They are adaptive expressions of environmental conditions.

For decades, IT evolved in response to a specific environment. Software was heavy and static. Systems were implemented over months, years, and even decades. Infrastructure was expensive and complex. Change was slow and deliberate. Technology supported human work, but it did not perform work itself.

In that environment, IT’s role was clear: deploy systems, maintain infrastructure, secure access, and ensure reliability. IT became exceptionally good at this. It was the architectural backbone of the modern enterprise.

But now, the environment has changed. Not gradually. Suddenly.

Software is no longer static. Intelligence is no longer confined to applications. Agents, software entities capable of performing tasks, making decisions, and interacting with systems, are beginning to operate alongside humans and, in some cases, on their behalf. Capabilities that once required entire applications can now be instantiated quickly. Intelligence is becoming composable, portable, and dynamic. This shift doesn’t invalidate IT’s role—it changes how that role must be expressed.

This is corporate epigenetics.

The underlying DNA of IT—its architectural responsibility, its stewardship of systems, its governance of access and security—remains intact. But the environment in which that DNA operates has changed. And as a result, the expression of IT’s role must evolve.

Recognizing the shift

The first and most important step is recognizing that the environment itself has changed. This is not simply the introduction of another new tool or platform. It is a structural shift in how capabilities are created, deployed, and operated inside organizations.

Agents introduce a new operational layer—one that sits between traditional software systems and the work humans perform. These agents require identity. They require access. They require governance. They require lifecycle management. They must be monitored, updated, secured, and integrated. This does not replace IT’s architectural responsibility. It expands it.

IT is no longer responsible only for the systems employees use. It is becoming responsible for the infrastructure that intelligent agents use to perform work.

This new layer—what I will described as agentic infrastructure—includes the identity frameworks, governance models, orchestration layers, model management, and architectural standards that allow agents to operate safely and effectively within the enterprise. This infrastructure will not emerge organically in a coherent way. It must be designed. And I firmly believe IT is uniquely positioned to design it.

The risk of fragmentation

When environments change faster than organizational structures adapt, fragmentation emerges. This is not new. IT leaders have spent decades managing the effects of "shadow IT"—business units adopting tools independently to move faster than centralized systems allowed.

Agents lower the barrier even further. They are lightweight. Accessible. Fast to deploy. Often acquired or created outside traditional procurement or architectural processes. This does not happen because business units are reckless.

It happens because they are adaptive. They are responding to the same environmental shift and feel the pressure to adapt. Point solutions provide a quick and easy solution. 

But without architectural coordination, fragmentation introduces risk. Not just security risk, but structural risk. Agents interacting with systems without consistent identity frameworks, governance standards, or architectural alignment create complexity that compounds over time.

This is not an argument against innovation. It is an argument for architectural stewardship. I believe IT’s role is not to prevent the emergence of agents, it is to create the infrastructure that allows them to emerge coherently, securely, and sustainably.

The emergence of organizational intelligence as infrastructure

I would like to suggest there is another shift potentially occurring beneath the surface.

When organizations build and deploy agents trained on their own data, workflows, and decision patterns, they are creating something new. These agents begin to reflect institutional knowledge. They encode operational logic. They perform tasks in ways that are unique to the organization. This is not just automation. It is the externalization of organizational intelligence.

Over time, these agents become part of the company’s intellectual fabric. They represent accumulated knowledge, operational capability, and competitive differentiation. And like any infrastructure, they must be architected, governed, and maintained. This places IT in a new and unique position. Not just as the operator of systems, but as the steward of the infrastructure that contains and enables organizational intelligence itself. 

This is likely a profound expansion of responsibility—and opportunity.

The Evolution of Technology Creation

Historically, large enterprise systems, like Microsoft, SAP, SalesForce, Oracle, are implemented through extensive coordination with external vendors and system integrators. These systems are heavy, complex, and required significant external expertise to deploy and manage.

That model is not disappearing, as core systems will continue to play a critical role. But alongside them, a new layer is emerging—one that is more composable, more iterative, and more internally architected. Agents do not require the same implementation model as traditional enterprise software. They can be created, refined, and deployed more fluidly. Their effectiveness depends less on monolithic deployment and more on the quality of the infrastructure in which they operate.

This shifts the center of gravity. The architectural decisions that matter most increasingly reside within the enterprise itself. And IT becomes the caretaker of that internal ecosystem.

The Opportunity

From the outside, this moment can look like disruption. From the inside, it is something else entirely. It is an expansion.

For decades, IT has been responsible for deploying and maintaining the systems organizations depend on. That responsibility does not disappear. It evolves. IT is becoming responsible for architecting and governing the agentic infrastructure that intelligent systems require to operate safely and effectively. This places IT at the center right now, designing the operational foundation of the modern enterprise. This is not a burden imposed on IT but a role uniquely suited to it.

Why do I think this? Because no other organizational function has the architectural visibility, the governance responsibility, or the systems-level perspective required to design this infrastructure coherently. This is IT’s moment to step fully into its role as the curator of the enterprise’s operational future.

I think back to those moments holding a rugby ball, watching overly aggressive defenders. What I didn’t understand then, but understand now, is that the player holding the ball isn’t just under pressure. They are in control.

In rugby, that player is often the number 10, the fly-half. They are not typically the biggest or fastest player on the field, they are the orchestrator. They read the game. They control the tempo. They decide when to pass, when to run, and when to create space. They shape the outcome.

The environment around IT has changed. Everything seems to be moving faster. The pressure is real. But the ball is now in IT’s hands. And with it comes the opportunity to architect what happens next.