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| 28/11/05 | | Business users are set to by-pass IT departments |
I had lunch with Serafino De Simone at Microhelp last week. Serafino has been running his IT company since the 80’s and based on that experience he made the following observation:
The last couple of years is the first time where IT functionality is better at home than at work.
This trend will have some interesting impacts. Take for example the relationship between IT departments and an organisation’s business lines.
IT departments want stability regardless of the business maelstrom swirling about their head. Everything must be locked down and controlled. We can understand this desire. IT systems are complex and must work. But as a result the company’s IT products are multiple versions behind and new software phenomena like wikis, blogs, VOIP, video streaming are just too hard to contemplate. Yet our sophisticated business users freely use these products at home and the gap between what users expect and what is being delivered is only getting wider.
Unless IT departments become more flexible and responsive we will see many business people by-pass IT and directly subscribe to the online services which deliver the functionality they need. Just look at Basecamp (project management), Salesforce.com (sales process), Typepad (blogging), Survey Monkey (online surveys), Bloglines (blog reader) and you will see that these types of applications are proliferating.
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Comments
Ah, that age-old human factor. No matter if the technology is better or not - it's always been a challenge keeping the users under control. Key to IT success is becoming a "service" organization versus "control."
Granted, we users have access to terrific tools, but we still need some help when they break...and many of us know just enough to be dangerous.
Posted by: Mary Schmidt at November 30, 2005 2:43 AM