“One way to look at the consumerization of IT is as a democratization of workplace technology decisions,” Ryan Fass reports for Cult of Mac.
“Executives and employees alike have become much more sophisticated users of technology. Through iPhones and iPads, they see how well designed devices, platforms, and apps can create enjoyable and, more importantly, productive user experiences,” Fass reports. “As a result, they don’t tolerate clunky business systems and slow IT responses as much as they did a few years ago.”
MacDailyNews Take: Uh oh, remaining IT doofuses.
Fass reports, “Many executives and pundits believe this has already changed the balance of power between the CIO/IT management and the CFO and other executives. A recent Gartner survey found that overall, CFOs are leading IT decision-making more than they were just two years ago. One could even argue that in addition to disrupting industries like music and mobile technology, Apple is subtly disrupting IT and business itself (with some help from other tech and business innovators)… It’s hard not to notice that nearly half of CFOs have gained clout since the iPad’s launch in 2010.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: iCal says we already addressed this issue from our precog tanks ten days before Apple launched the iPhone:
One device, Apple’s iPhone, is far more evolved than anything else on the market today. The IT dinos will be — gasp! — forced to accommodate the employees; a rarity, we know, but watch and see.
The IT guys are in for a rude awakening and the iPhone is only the beginning. They will have to accommodate the iPhone. Too many important employees will demand it and IT won’t be able to stem the tide. The fact is that business people will decide which device they want to carry and their businesses will adapt to it. Just as they did with “Microsoft-incompatible” Research In Motion’s Blackberry. Apple’s iPhone will be a success with business users whether the IT guy wants it or even whether AT&T and Apple tailor marketing to businesses or not.
Note to CEOs: Who runs the company, you or the IT guy? It’s your job to make the decisions and it’s the IT guy’s job to implement your decisions that relate to technology. Just as with Macs, you need to educate yourself instead of relying on someone with their own, possibly hidden, agendas to make extremely important technology decisions for your company. Most of you could be saving a LOT of money right now, but you aren’t because you’ve delegated an important part of your company’s decision-making to people who, frankly, in our experience, aren’t capable of making good, sound, strategic, long-term decisions. Most IT guys (and we know many) are not open-minded enough to be able to consider new, better, more efficient, more effective options that would benefit your company. In fact, most IT guys we’ve met will throw up road blocks and repeat myths until they’re blue in the face in order to avoid change. Especially change that might make their department less critical or smaller. Bottom line: most of you CEOs have given the IT guy way, way, way too much power. It’s time to take it back. – MacDailyNews Take, June 19, 2007
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” and “Dominic P.” for the heads up.]
That MDN quote is so spot on, it’s a little creepy….almost.
Right on, MDN !
This thing about IT-guy power is what kept MS big for so long.
I know, because I have had IT tasks occasionally, and now deplore (and see the nonsense and non-timeliness of) the ways I sometimes pressured IT users to do certain things.
I know, because later on, as an Apple adept, I clashed with other IT-guys from the dark side, who were constantly cuddling up with management to secure their power (and who kept infesting company IT with MS-only setups). In return they were blindly consulted by management.
Yep, definitely seen it where I used to work. Probably one at every place.
Yikes, MDN that is eerie!
Hey, where can I get one of those precog tanks? I think I have some ideas about how to best use it.
(And I’m not talking about predicting where manure trucks will be, although I would sure would use it for that, too.)
The Apple Model of business is ‘the example’ on how business should be emulated or at least understood. It does not require carbonating or copying – just understanding as the world has changed.
As fore-seen, the iPhone is the perfect ‘Trojan Horse’ to bring iOS and Mac, back to the people dominated for years by self-interested IT.
Ah, I just love the smell of evolution.
I guess a real IT guy can figure it all out. Willing and Able. After all its his job to maintain, repair and protect. But once protection is too much; might as well become an island.
IT departments which control too much have this effect – thats dangerous for Mac or PC environments.
That shift in the balance of power from CIO/IT to the other managers – that has been a long time coming.
Go back enough years to when people, even CEOs, were intimidated by computers, that is when the Morlocks began to consolidate their power and prestige.
By now, the messages of complexity and hand holding have been realized to be nothing more than shamanism, ruse, and double dealing. This time it is not the emperor, but the minions of great Oz, who are revealed to be without much in the way of decent clothing.
Morlocks indeed. Heh.
Or is it Mordac, the Preventer of Information Services, from the Dilbert strip?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minor_characters_in_Dilbert#Minor_recurring_characters
How prescient MDN. Now tell the truth, you are really Nostradamus reincarnated are you not?