[maxxxxx]

"Do developers become the new gatekeepers of the large enterprises?"

I doubt it. From what I see is that developers can do a few things but as soon as the IT department hears about it they will try to standardize on a solution. And you are back in big Enterprise sales. In the end the CIO wants to keep his/her budgets and power.

I just went through this. We prototyped a system and thought it would work. IT jumped at it and made that supplier the company wide standard. In the meantime we got some doubts and will probably jump ship. But IT is sticking to their decision.