The Internet, Globalization, and IT Professional Services

i This editorial aims (1) to define IT Professional Services (ITPS) as an increasingly important area of research endeavor, and (2) to consider the impact of the Internet on globalization and the ITPS sector. ITPS are IT-related services offered by an IT Professional Services Firm (ITPS Firm) to ITPS-using client organizations (ITPS Users). 1 ITPS are distinguished herein from IT Services (ITS) supplied by an IT function internal to the IT-using organization. ITPS Firms are distinguished from other Professional Service Firms (PSFs; e.g., Law, Accounting/Audit, General Management Consulting) in that their services predominantly relate to the design, development , selection, implementation, maintenance , operation or management of IT for the ITPS User. The ITPS sector has taken on a larger (and growing) role in the servicing of IT within organizations as a consequence of the concurrent increasing complexity and standardization of IT. The increasing standardization of technology has meant increasing economies of scale from servicing the technology across a larger client base, thereby reducing the relative cost of external services for any single ITPS User and promoting the growth of the ITPS sector. The advent of inter-organizational systems (e.g., SCM, CRM) has dramatically increased the complexity of IT, as well as spreading control of IT across multiple stake-holder ITPS Users. This increasing standardization of technology, increasing complexity , and diffusion of control have promoted the growth of IT and business process outsourcing and its variants (e.g., facilities management, application service provision) and a more general growth in reliance on externally provided IT services. Though ITPS does not have " management of the IT function " as a specific research focus, this is important to the extent that: (1) the IT function is dissipating due to the growth of external IT services; (2) new skills are required of the IT function to work with external services; and (3) the IT function is being " externalized " through charge-back and user-pays systems. We noted that once an organization moves to charge-back or user-pays, the relationship of the IT function with the rest of the business changes suddenly and substantively ; this " externalizing " of the IT function results in a " transaction " , and thus functions more akin to a marketplace. At the same time, organizations continue to become more EDITORIAL PREFACE