Every week, I share the most interesting and useful tech articles that I’ve found over the past week. This week’s top articles focus on reasons why IT departments won’t disappear, how to close the IT talent gap, and more. I hope you find them useful:

When it doesn’t make sense to go to the cloud
We constantly see articles touting the advantages of the cloud (usually from cloud vendors). But, is the cloud the best option for everyone? No. Some companies are better off keeping their data and applications in house, while others are better off moving all or parts of it to the cloud. The important thing: You must prepare your company for any scenario. How? Build cloud-ready applications that run anywhere.

7 reasons why IT won’t disappear anytime soon
As more and more IT functions move to publicly-available cloud services, many predict the end of the IT department as we know it. Not so fast. As this article explains, while the IT department is undergoing a major shift, it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.

How to close the IT talent gap
As new technology emerges seemingly every day, many companies face a growing skills gap. They need their current skills to manage their current technology, but also need modern skills to bring in new technology. How can these companies close this growing talent gap? Here’s one option.

8 ways BI software improves the bottom line
Many companies still plod along using make-shift BI methods (like spreadsheets) or none at all. If your company falls into that category, it might actually be hurting your bottom line. As explained in the article, proper BI is actually great for business.