ManageFusion Industry Experts’ Panel: The Consumerization of IT (part 2)

As this year’s panel warmed up, the ideas really got rolling. Listen to what our four industry experts, Tom Henderson, Linda Musthaler, Michael Dortch and Peter Varhol had to say about the impact of social networking as they discussed the Consumerization of IT:

Tom: “Facebook has become a part of a culture that has its own rules. These things have social structures that are very important to people. The majority of your employees don’t want to live without them. If you were to turn off every cell phone and Blackberry, within a few seconds you’d be hearing the screams. Social networking is becoming a similar thing. It’s a culture with values about keeping each other informed. We provoke and tempt each other on a professional and also on a very personal level. These things are a very important part of the business and social network. They are not only addictive but very powerful for inspiring change.”

Read part 1 of this panel discussion here.

Michael: “I just turned 52. Admittedly, I have one foot on either side of this generational divide. I agree with Tom. But I would make a point in response. As Forest Gump so aptly puts it, culture is as culture does. It turns out that social networking, like a lot of other information technologies, is going to expose and surface things a lot of us have either ignored or don’t believe exist.

“There are significant cultural differences in how different people do their jobs. The same tools that expose those differences can build bridges that can be linking these groups. Companies right now are using social networking to capture the expertise of older workers and to share it with younger workers as a hedge against not being able to replace all of these older workers as they start to retire. But this phenomenon requires its own cultural shift. At some point, some person or group has to stand up and say, ‘This is what we’re going to do because it will help the business, and we’re not going to debate this.’

Peter: “I’m a baby boomer, but I’m proud to say that Michael is older than I. Someone graduating college today can’t remember a time when cell phones and computers weren’t readily available. They may not even remember a time when they couldn’t access the Internet. This is a very different culture than the one we grew up in. Today’s college grad has been exposed to technology at a very young age.”

Linda: “I’m very vocal about LinkedIn and Facebook. We’re giving over very personal information without control. I think there are needs for that kind of technology in the corporation. But there are ways to protect it. What if Facebook gets acquired, and what would happen with our personal information if that happened? Sharepoint is a way to achieve that kind of thing, but you can keep your information in house and control it. People interested in security should be interested as well.”

Michael: “Yes, but technology is trumped by process and culture. At the end of the day you don’t have control over your private information. If I care, I can find it. If you care, you can find it. Sharepoint is a great example of this. We see clients who will build a Sharepoint portal to share information in the enterprise and then take their sensitive information and put it on a Sharepoint server not protected from the outside. That is how to make career limiting decisions in IT. You’re going to see enterprise-ready versions of all these technologies very soon. The challenge is picking the right ones that interoperate with the environments you have right now while also protecting your information. These issues existed before these technologies came out. But this is IT’s biggest opportunity: to find the ways to make this work out.”

Linda: “I have two teens who think e-mail is a dinosaur. They are IMing friends who are sitting across the table from them. The newer generation is going to be demanding these kinds of technologies whether we like it or not.”

Tom: “I have a ‘thumb’ daughter and a ‘thumb’ son with their eyes already glued to something else and earphones in their ears pretty much all of the time. This is how they live. They’ve been brought up in a house where I pull the earphones away from their ears just to ask them a question. Verizon has discovered how to suck coins from your wallet.

“One of my daughters sends me SMS messages from a widget and a Mozilla browser. She now has a service she can use from her office to send me SMS direct from her desktop. I get short little things. This new language is something that’s now part of the jargon of our culture. IT’s role is about getting the biggest mitt you can find to catch it. Today we see Symantec’s acquisition of a wonderful company that works with their SVS product to session isolate and find yet another vehicle for desktops to create fuzz and goo and digital mold without affecting the corporate network.

“Your desktop is the home for whatever you want to bring in. How long will this trend last? I’m not quite sure, but it’s interesting in terms of IT solutions.”

Peter: “I’m very project oriented. I go do my project and bring back a result. But today’s 20-something professional is out collaborating; texting while they’re working, dropping their ideas while working, working together. There’s no obvious person in charge, yet they seem to be highly productive this way.”

Michael: “Leaving aside how frightening this 20-something professional may be, IT’s job is straightforward. That is to understand that there is only one prediction you can make with impunity and that’s change is inevitable. IT’s job is the building and maintenance of infrastructures that support collaboration and styles of work while protecting the security. That’s the short list of to-do’s for the foreseeable future. The conversations are around what the next wave of work styles are going to be.”

Linda: “You’ve just defined job security for everyone in this room.”

Stephen: “Is it realistic to ban Facebook and Linked in?”

Peter: “You can try, but you’re not doing your enterprise any favors by doing so.”

Michael: “It won’t help your recruiting efforts. You’ll have a very spirited and short discussion.”

Peter: “And if you haven’t established the technologies Tom is talking about, you’re probably hurting yourself and putting your company at a competitive disadvantage.”

Michael: “This is one of IT’s key challenges in life. In a large financial services company I spoke to, the IT director wanted to convince his company to buy an identity management solution. He ran the numbers. He discovered that the majority of all helpdesk calls and responses were being spent on password resets. He told the CEO, ‘I can save every employee 10 minutes a day,’ and he stood back expecting the boss would give him a pat on the back. And the boss answered, ‘Why don’t we just make everyone work an extra 10 minutes a day?’ This is what you’re up against. As these technologies evolve and culture clashes happen, IT has to keep one eye on the technologies and one eye on the business objectives of the moment.”