| Consumerization in the enterprise could ‘cripple IT’
Nearly 50 percent of employees feel more empowered than IT to control their personal IT environment. This consumerization trend will be a nightmare for IT departments because it will create major maintenance and support problems that will swiftly overwhelm resources, crippling the IT department. IT that tries to ignore the adoption of these technologies in the workplace will potentially lead to a hazardous mix of secured and unsecured applications in the enterprise. These findings are highlights from a new Yankee Group Report, ‘Zen and the Art of Rogue Employee Management’. According to the report, the solution relies on IT departments adopting a Zen-like approach to manage the technology and the rogue employee. Ceding control to end users via a internal customer care cooperative model reduces IT's burden while improving customer satisfaction. The Zen support model is fundamentally different than most IT organizations today because it doesn't seek to dictate policy and enforce standards, but rather set guidelines and steer users in the right direction. "As ubiquitous connectivity takes hold, consumers are driving more innovation and technology trends in the enterprise," said Joshua Holbrook, Yankee Group Enterprise Research program manager. "Enterprises can't avoid consumerization or implement traditional approaches to managing consumerization in the enterprise because it's failing. It's time for a new operating model; an IT care co-op is the solution." Some best practices in a Zen-like approach to an IT care co-op solution include: * Using Web 2.0 tools to create customer care cooperatives that save IT time and money while improving end-user satisfaction * Facilitating online social networks and wikis, which allow end-user communities to manage their own IT support function * Setting security baselines that aren't flexible for IT groups to gracefully stitch wikis and collaborative technology into their existing infrastructure Yankee Group believes that success will not rely on technology alone. In fact, to manage consumerization, enterprises should provide employees with incentives to prevent circumvention of care co-op tools.
•Date: 9th August 2007• Region: World •Type: Article •Topic: IT continuity
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