Software Consumerization
Many of the greatest IT innovations of recent years have come from the consumer world. From the PC to Facebook innovation has been incubated at home (or the garage) before the office.
The challenge for the IT department is managing the influx of this technology into the workplace. Many react badly and ban these outright. From the web and e-mail to IM and Facebook IT departments have blocked access to new technology before the backlash overwhelms them.
It’s a perennial struggle of any IT function to cope with end-user backlash/anarchy. It can be Facebook or a proliferation of WSS sites.
Take a pro-active stance. Look at trends in the consumer space and think about the scenarios where they could add business value. Again, think about this as a blend of tools, an infrastructure rather than a list of discrete applications. This helps manage the decision to roll-out or not, and when to do so under one project. SharePoint is a great example of where Social Networking can be enabled as part of existing collaboration functionality rather than YAA (Yet Another Application).
Social Networking definitely has a key role to play in business so it makes sense to think about how you could apply it in organization before you find your user community takes the lead.
I've even heard of organizations using Facebook as their intranet. Risky. Blocking Facebook? Riskier.
Bernard was born in London in 1981. He graduated from The University of Essex in 2002 and joined Microsoft as a Graduate shortly after. He has spent time working in a variety of positions in Microsoft's Information Worker Business, moving to the Redmond HQ in 2008.
