Flickr photo: pasukaru76"Now is the Time for IT Leaders to Re-imagine IT"

That was the subject line of an email I received from Gartner recently. Sure, the email was just a pitch for one of their upcoming events, but I can't help but think of that subject line as a battle cry – a drop-your-mobile-phone-and-pay-attention type of battle cry.

If you're the person responsible for technology at your organization, you have a responsibility you may not even have realized was yours. Sure, you didn't sign up for more responsibility; keeping the servers running and your end-users happy has been challenging enough in this economy. But for those of us who do technology in the social sector, it's a responsibility we can't afford to ignore. 

You are responsible for the success of your organization's mission.

Flickr Photo: Tech Writer BoyHere at NTEN World Headquarters, we simply could not live without Cloud computing and Software as a Service (SaaS). We have staff members in three time zones -- and no IT department -- but the Cloud gives us (nearly) maintenance-free infrastructure and real-time collaboration that wouldn't be reasonably possible otherwise.

I've been talking about the cloud a lot lately as I roam the country, forcing audiences to pay attention to me. Since I love the cloud so much, I sort of assumed you all would be behind it, too. To your credit, most of you are. But there is a stronghold out there that is, shall we say, a wee bit skeptical. I'd like to respond to that with a healthy "Get Over It!", but I actually understand where the skeptics are coming from.

Enter Gartner. In another of their always insightful webinars, we got to take a look at where the cloud is now, and where it's headed. I live tweeted a bunch about this, but here are my notes in a reasonable approximation of order:

Every Wednesday, Gartner does a free webinar on a variety of topics. This week, they presented "Technology Trends You Can't Afford to Ignore." I tweeted my way through the one hour call, but here are some notes with a little more clarity and reflection.

Flickr Photo: Steve WamplerI know that -- if you haven't had to already -- many of you are right in the middle of figuring out how to cut your IT budget for the next fiscal year. It stinks, but you have to do what you have to do.

That said, you want to make sure the cuts you make are smart, and that they set you up for success when your budget can expand again.

That was the theme of a webinar I attended with the folks from Gartner called "Emergency IT Cost Cutting." What DO you do when your boss walks in and asks you to shave 25% from your budget?

Being me, I tweeted throughout the webinar, which also sparked a couple great conversations. Here are some of the highlights: