Can IT be lean?

Andrew Clifford has posted The dismantling of IT, in which he ponders the result of a wide scale trimming down of IT architectures.

No arguments on the concept here, but I'm still a bit puzzled by particular article in the series.

The essence, in my opinion, is the following statement,

The most obvious change is that the new architecture would remove technical layers, such as databases and middleware. These capabilities would of course still exist, but they could be standardised and hidden inside the systems. They would not need so much management, and we would need fewer specialists.

This "still exist, they could be standardised and hidden inside the systems" seems no different than the waves of abstraction we have seen in the past.

Perhaps elaboration is in order.

I do not reject the concept because of a dislike for the idea of dismantling of traditional IT. Far from it... I simply do not see an avoidance of the fundamental problems mentioned in previous posts.

Have I missed a step?