By Tim Ferguson, 6 November 2006 17:00
NEWS
End users should be given more control and responsibility over their computing needs so IT departments can focus on ways of improving how businesses can function, according to analyst house Gartner.
On average two-thirds of a company's IT budget is spent on operations and maintenance, leaving little money to invest in initiatives that could transform businesses, it said.
Gartner also stressed that end users are becoming frustrated with restrictions IT departments place on them. As a result, many turn to consumer tech and services to improve the way they work.
The analyst said consumer technologies - such as instant messaging, podcasting, Skype and wi-fi - have the potential to "radically increase" employee productivity. But he added too many IT organisations still try to control or prevent use of such technologies.
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Speaking at Gartner's Symposium in Cannes, senior Gartner VP, Peter Sondergaard explained that while many of the responsibilities of the IT organisation remains mission critical, it needs to "bend to the realities of and opportunities associated with consumer, internet and fast-emerging technologies".
He added Gartner "firmly believes these technologies, and the ones to follow, will power the future economy provided the IT organisation lets go".
Comments
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1. George Clapperton
I totally agree with what Gartner say
BUT! there needs to be some education of the "end users" who are doing the demanding. Many have been the victims of glib salesmen (especially in phone shops) who themselves have no real idea of the capabilities or limitations of the technology they are selling.
The maufacturers are developing to their concept of the mobile world without any thought for whats really needed and many IT departments themselves lack any real knowledge of mobile technology capabilities........
SO ITS CHAOS ALL ROUND!
I'm doing myself out of business here but we need a decent forum via someone like Gartner to bring some sense to all this and coordinate requirements with capability and future developments
2. Roger Huffadine
IT departments are increasingly frustrated by the non network friendly crap that people install on their PCs and Laptops. The reasons for the restrictions is not the IT department wanting to control the World but rather wanting to keep the network from falling over, or having to rebuild the software on PC's.
Let's have Gartner doing more 'in depth' work for the reports and less of the superficial stuff for which they have become renowned. There are too many 'candy floss' applications written to appeal to the inexperienced users and sold as 'snake oil'. Come on Gartner pile some pressure on the real cause of the software deployment bottleneck and have a go at the 'snake oil' salesmen.
3. Roger Huffadine
Oh! I forgot - let's name one of the biggest offenders--- AOL ---. How many billions of man hours have been waisted Worldwide, over the last 10 years, by techies having to un-plat AOL from a PC or Laptop? I don't know about Microsoft being hauled through the courts for having embedded applications I believe that AOL should face similar fines for its invasive, infective, non uninstalable "??software??"
4. Robin Barlow
Having seen both devolved IT and Centralised, I would never want to go back to the uncontrolled free for all. In this increasingly litigious society, many consumer technologies are completely inadequate at protecting the user and organisation - just read the Skype terms of use or try and produce the legally admissible IM conversations.
So I want to have the users involved in identifying how to progress the business and but unless the CEO is prepared to put their head on the line when the lawyers call, I want staff who understand the consequences and take responsibility for compliance to be managing it - IT.
5. Simon
I agree with Roger Huffadine here, IT departments would LOVE to let their users do some of the work - BUT they can't because first and foremost their responsibility is to keep everything working. Only this morning, in the support inbox, a message from one of our customers "User installed IE7, now they have no internet browsing".
Some technologies are simply not appropriate. For example, Skype is not suitable for use in a large corporate. It might well suit a small business is two or three people, but in a large corporate it simply offers the scope for unknown communications to go unmonitored (legal implications), clog up the WAN/internet connection (cost & performance implications), and generally present a crap image to customers (PR implications).
And like others, I've personally had the "I installed X and now <something> doesn't work" from users. Are we then allowed to say "tough s**t, you broke it, you can fix it" ? No, we as IT are held responsible for it having broke in the first place !
So Gartner needs to stop sniffing the snake oil and go see what a REAL business needs !