The IT stacks we saw and worked with until recently are almost things of the past now. This change, of course, can be mainly attributed to the Internet evolution and the way IT is being leveraged these days especially with the blurring of lines between personal and work-related IT use. The role and expectations from IT have vastly changed in an increasingly shorter amount of time than in previous years. The epiphenomenon of these expectations is the emergence of technologies like cloud computing, mobility, Big Data and social collaboration. This has had a dramatic and direct impact on how we look at the IT stack today and in the near future, what we plan to achieve with IT, how we are going to achieve them, and what skills or acumen we should be developing in order to succeed.

Of course, there won't just be a single IT Stack per se (no one-size-fits-all), but we need a basic framework that will set the direction for future options. Future IT stacks that stem from the proposed one below won't be driven by technology alone, but by the very nature of the applications and workloads they are created for; and equally, by the end user's aspiration for newer experiences.

Here is what I am proposing: