It seems to be a popular pastime this time of year to project doom and gloom onto the prospects for IT, but InformationWeek's Chris Murphy injects a refreshing voice of reason into the mix: "Here's a goal we can all embrace for 2012," he writes in a post this week. "No more existential hand-wringing about whether IT has a promising role, future, value, or purpose."

As Murphy points out, enterprises in all kinds of industries are making enormous investments in IT right now, demonstrating just how indispensable the field and its practitioners are. GE plans to build a $1 billion software center in Silicon Valley, where it will employ 400 engineers and other professionals; Adidas has started selling soccer cleats that come with chips to record speed, distance and turns data, which can be sent to laptops or smartphones; Toyota just brought Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) into a partnership to study in-vehicle multimedia systems.

And those are just a few initiatives announced last month alone. "How does this myth of IT's shrinking relevance persist, when so many companies are driving extraordinary results, making huge bets, and taking huge risks based on their faith in emerging technologies?" Murphy asks.

What is changing, Murphy writes, is the need for IT pros to bring a higher level of relationship-building and leadership skills to the job. IT remains relevant, no doubt, but to excel it requires a closer interaction with business units, particularly marketing and product development. "Such skills are in demand at every level of IT. For companies that have them, 2012 will be another year of proving the creative and indispensable force that IT is," he writes.

For more:
- see Chris Murphy's post at InformationWeek

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