Andrew McAfee's Blog: Enterprise 2.0 May be Fine for the Business, But What About the IT Department?
John Caddell
· 2 years ago
That the IT tail is trying to wag the corporation dog is not at all surprising. But there is a silver lining for companies--Web 2.0 tools are easy to outsource--in many cases they began as consumer-oriented, ASP tools.
As a result, the IT department can be bypassed, if necessary. Is that desirable for the company as a whole? It would certainly be better if IT enabled these tools, instead of suppressed them. But it's good to know that they can flourish nonetheless.
Also, as companies' borders become more porous, with more contractors, partners, affiliates, etc., the bunkerized security of the data center will have to be compromised.
Regards,
John
Thierry FAUCHER
· 2 years ago
Enterprises are aware of lag behind. But that is changing. A group of large-scale distribution is in the process of recruiting me to develop new tools for communication and collaboration. For many, the value of a manager is his knowledge and network. A man who has built his career on these principles, found it difficult to share everything today. Enterprises needs to appropriate all these new tools.
Dan Keldsen
· 2 years ago
Andrew - you have to wonder if the low ranking of blogs in this study is because blogs have after all been around in various forms for anywhere from 5-10 years, and as a result have become somewhat "mainstreet" to borrow from Geoffrey Moore's terminology.
That's one possibility at least - and another is that this is just classic technology adoption and resistance.
In some cases, IT leads the charge, and that may be when they have more to gain (personally/professionally) with items they can add to their resumes. And in general, particularly for "big IT" shops - they aren't focused on experimentation, they're focused on making sure the big ship that is the business doesn't explode or implode, and that the plumbing/machinery actually works (according to SLA if not in that it "supports the business" - a different tangent). They "keep the lights on" - although not necessarily the newest and most energy efficient lights.
In other cases, they defend (reject) threats to the normal state of being. This is of course normal - as much as we may desire change, when it comes from outside (i.e., business users), then the outside (or business) force feels like an intrusion.
I've been on both sides of the fence myself, as a "typical" IT guy, a business/IT bridge builder, and a "typical" business person. And in the end it's not that IT necessarily has it out to stop progress, nor that business is out to have progress at any cost - either side can get caught up in the buzz and lose sight of any connection to what this is all for.
So in the end, what is needed, is to get conversations going that bring everyone onto the same page.
And to that end, I must say that I don't buy for a second that IT shops are avoiding blogs (or wikis) as internal tools. Heck, that's where many of them started life in big companies. They were the simple tools that opened up communications, and made it possible to wrestle projects to the ground.
It's the disconnect between IT-only focused applications, and business-only focused applications that concerns me. We have a real opportunity here to make communication happen across business silos, and across this great "digital divide" of business to IT.
Doug Cornelius
· 2 years ago
I think it is great that 13% thought blogs were very important and that 5% though SNS was very important.
I think IT is in the same boat at the general population when it comes to Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0. They read the scary stories in the media about the dangers of Facebook and bad things said on blogs.
I bet the percentages would be be even lower of a poll of less tech-savvy people.
Saqib Ali
· 2 years ago
I think this particular "Impact Assessment" table is stale and probably wildly inaccurate.
I have found the situation to be quite opposite. Traditionally the Business Unit want the newer technology, while IT dept tries to hold back. But in the case of E2.0, BUs are not latching on to a good technology, while IT is trying to push the E2.0 technology.
This push from the IT to implement E2.0 can be largely attributed to the fact that likes of IBM, and Microsoft have started to produce E2.0 enabled suites. And since IT depts already have good relations with these companies, moving to E2.0 enabled technology stack is a natural progression.
It used to be the case that these large software houses were lagging behind in web2.0 technology, but that is no longer the case. In fact IBM's web 2.0 enabler (Lotus Connection) has jumped ahead of all other competition in terms of functionality produced and ease of integration with the existing infrastructure.
The initial push-back from IT was due to the learning curve involved and instability of the small web 2.0 software developer. But now since likes of IBM are producing the E2.0 enablers, IT has not objection.
Garrett
· 2 years ago
I think there are a couple issues at work here. First, many IT executives do not understand Web 2.0 tools. I was at an event this week of senior IT executives and none of the people I spoke to were fully using social networking sites. Some had used LinkedIn and then made their judgments about social networking based on that limited experience. We are only at the beginning of the development of these tools and it is unfair to make judgments based on one vendor's platform or the current state of the platform.
Second, IT needs to realize that workers are using Web 2.0 tools in their daily life and will come to demand these tools at work. Much like workers have demanded IM they will also demand social networking. In many cases this is driven by younger workers.
It is about time that IT realizes that technology is changing faster than ever before. It makes no sense to stand in the way of change but rather IT departments should be working to proactively understand new technologies and find the best way to standardize and manage them in the organization.
Geoff Ward
· 2 years ago
Ive seen that it is sometimes a resistance to the medium not the concept. Using vlog's (video blog) approach is one answer to that. The vlog content could follow a number of presentation approaches
1. a voice over a slide presentation that follows standards such as "Pecha Kucha" (http://www.pecha-kucha.org/) where you move through 20 images in 6 mins 40 secs. I really like this stuff because it creates a nice business pattern for communicating ideas. "Pecha Kucha (which is Japanese for the sound of conversation) has tapped into a demand for a forum in which creative work can be easily and informally shown"
2. the vlog as a traditional video (or just audio) of someone talking into a camera/microphone.
I like the use of video/audio because we can then leverage the fact everyone has video/audio players such as PC's iPhones and smart-phones.
Nick
· 2 years ago
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for the insightful post. Having built and sold software to enterprise IT for many years, I was not surprised by the results of the survey. It has been interesting to watch the trend over the past 10 years of IT trying to get "better aligned with the business." Despite these efforts, IT (like most shared functions), remains dramatically disconnected from "the business" (whatever "the business" means). As I think about it more, I am developing the view that IT is truly just a symptom of the larger issue which as at the heart of Enterprise 2.0. IT represents the machine of enforcement of the hierarchical and top-down company model will be disrupted over the decades to come. IT (in its modern form) is a way for management to try to control projects and resources and drive the worker bees to get things done. In short, IT is not bad or inept but simply archaic relative to the business world that we'll live in 20-30 years from now. And any system or institution will certainly fight the technologies or innovations that stand to destroy them.
Nick
Kishor
· 2 years ago
It is important to clearly articulate that E2.0 indeed provides benefit to business. Some benefits may be more direct (revenue, profit etc.,) than others (employee productivity, knowledge management etc.,). The need is to devise different metric (than the traditional methods like ROI or CBA) to highlight such benefits in a language that business understands. One other way (to influence) is to show potential 'loss of benefits' in the absense of E2.0.
Anne Pauker-Kreitzberg
· 2 years ago
I recently commented about the same InformationWeek article in my blog www.leadersintheknow.info. Web 2.0 is more about people than it is about technology which, perhaps, explains why the IT folks surveyed in InformationWeek dismissed the value.
Web 2.0 represents nothing less than a sea change in the modern workplace; organizations large and small are not ready.
The web world demands better talent at all levels of the organization. It requires people who can: form meaningful relationships from a distance; work across organizational and cultural boundaries; discern good information from bad; focus on the important rather than the extraneous; synthesize enormous amounts of information; and work collaboratively rather than hierarchically.
The web world throws the spotlight on how poorly organizations handle exceptions. The web is designed to handle routine processes and order fulfillment, disintermediating human intervention. It doesn't do a good job of handling nonroutine questions or resolving problems. "Customer service" and "technology" have become oxymorons.
Today's management cadre isn't prepared for dealing with any of this. IT, HR, Legal and other staff divisions need to get with it and start to tackle the underlying issues their organizations face in implementing these technologies rather than to create roadblocks.
IT and HR departments have tried for decades to be viewed as strategic business partners, often without success. Rather than leading the charge, they are seriously underestimating the significance of Web 2.0 in transforming the business world and the workplace. As Millenials join them, this gap will become even more glaring.
Web Design & SEO
· 2 years ago
Hi, I'm a new reader of your blog, I just subscribed to your RSS feed. Great post.
Adrian Moss
· 2 years ago
Hi,
History repeats itself. In 1984 we (Lotus Europe) undertook a survey with IT people on the importance and use of PCs and personal productivity software. Result - not needed/not wanted/not important. Less than 10% thought it worth watching! So all our marketing was directed to end users. Working often with fellow travelers HP and Compaq we never had problems filling our European seminar programmes with end users unhappy with poor IT service and support.
Chris Bowering
· 2 years ago
These discussions about E2.0 and Web2.0 always remind me of a quote from a newsgroup I've had pinned on my wall for almost 15 years. I think it applies quite well:
"You cannot impose a new technology on an existing organization and expect all other aspects of that organization not to be affected. You must engineer not only the software and hardware, but also a new social structure. If you do not, your system will be doomed to failure despite any technical merit it might have." -G2, Human Factors, Univ. of Toronto
(That's the only attribution I've ever had for the quote.)
Sayan
· 2 years ago
I think Adrian says it all. W2.0 or E2.0 might be resisted, but it would penetrate the boundary sometime sooner or later, and would make incremental changes. I am bit skeptic about whether it would "revolutionize" "the business" (it sounds good only in presentations! :) ) but it would make an impact over a period of time, once the collected wisdom takes a definite shape and the more non-savvy users would start to see the benefits of the E2.0 tools.
Kelly Shaw
· 2 years ago
Dear Dr. McAfee,
Good post. Thank you very much for sharing your insights.
I notice you talk about wikis, blogs and SNS, but not about mashups. In my blog (http://businessmashup.blogspot.com) I've applied your comments to mashups and found that they are equally relevant. Mashups have the potential to disrupt applications development organizations in the same way that wikis, blogs and SNS disrupt IT Operations.
Regards,
Kelly A. Shaw, Ph.D. Analyst Serena Software
Jessie Paul
· 2 years ago
I think consumerization of Enterprise IT - which is what web2.0 will lead to - is going to change the way IT departments are structured. For example, if marketing wants a wiki there are enough opensource tools that can allow a techsavvy marketer to build one himself. Ditto with blogs. So because of customer or internal customer demand, web2.0 will be entrenched in business. this is a change from the past when business or defense originated new technologies and then they got adopted by general consumers.
Edmund Ng
· 2 years ago
Great insight. Don't be discouraged, web 2.0 has not developed into it's full potential yet.
All Comments
As a result, the IT department can be bypassed, if necessary. Is that desirable for the company as a whole? It would certainly be better if IT enabled these tools, instead of suppressed them. But it's good to know that they can flourish nonetheless.
Also, as companies' borders become more porous, with more contractors, partners, affiliates, etc., the bunkerized security of the data center will have to be compromised.
Regards,
John
For many, the value of a manager is his knowledge and network. A man who has built his career on these principles, found it difficult to share everything today.
Enterprises needs to appropriate all these new tools.
That's one possibility at least - and another is that this is just classic technology adoption and resistance.
In some cases, IT leads the charge, and that may be when they have more to gain (personally/professionally) with items they can add to their resumes. And in general, particularly for "big IT" shops - they aren't focused on experimentation, they're focused on making sure the big ship that is the business doesn't explode or implode, and that the plumbing/machinery actually works (according to SLA if not in that it "supports the business" - a different tangent). They "keep the lights on" - although not necessarily the newest and most energy efficient lights.
In other cases, they defend (reject) threats to the normal state of being. This is of course normal - as much as we may desire change, when it comes from outside (i.e., business users), then the outside (or business) force feels like an intrusion.
I've been on both sides of the fence myself, as a "typical" IT guy, a business/IT bridge builder, and a "typical" business person. And in the end it's not that IT necessarily has it out to stop progress, nor that business is out to have progress at any cost - either side can get caught up in the buzz and lose sight of any connection to what this is all for.
So in the end, what is needed, is to get conversations going that bring everyone onto the same page.
And to that end, I must say that I don't buy for a second that IT shops are avoiding blogs (or wikis) as internal tools. Heck, that's where many of them started life in big companies. They were the simple tools that opened up communications, and made it possible to wrestle projects to the ground.
It's the disconnect between IT-only focused applications, and business-only focused applications that concerns me. We have a real opportunity here to make communication happen across business silos, and across this great "digital divide" of business to IT.
I think IT is in the same boat at the general population when it comes to Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0. They read the scary stories in the media about the dangers of Facebook and bad things said on blogs.
I bet the percentages would be be even lower of a poll of less tech-savvy people.
I have found the situation to be quite opposite. Traditionally the Business Unit want the newer technology, while IT dept tries to hold back. But in the case of E2.0, BUs are not latching on to a good technology, while IT is trying to push the E2.0 technology.
This push from the IT to implement E2.0 can be largely attributed to the fact that likes of IBM, and Microsoft have started to produce E2.0 enabled suites. And since IT depts already have good relations with these companies, moving to E2.0 enabled technology stack is a natural progression.
It used to be the case that these large software houses were lagging behind in web2.0 technology, but that is no longer the case. In fact IBM's web 2.0 enabler (Lotus Connection) has jumped ahead of all other competition in terms of functionality produced and ease of integration with the existing infrastructure.
The initial push-back from IT was due to the learning curve involved and instability of the small web 2.0 software developer. But now since likes of IBM are producing the E2.0 enablers, IT has not objection.
Second, IT needs to realize that workers are using Web 2.0 tools in their daily life and will come to demand these tools at work. Much like workers have demanded IM they will also demand social networking. In many cases this is driven by younger workers.
It is about time that IT realizes that technology is changing faster than ever before. It makes no sense to stand in the way of change but rather IT departments should be working to proactively understand new technologies and find the best way to standardize and manage them in the organization.
1. a voice over a slide presentation that follows standards such as "Pecha Kucha" (http://www.pecha-kucha.org/) where you move through 20 images in 6 mins 40 secs. I really like this stuff because it creates a nice business pattern for communicating ideas.
"Pecha Kucha (which is Japanese for the sound of conversation) has tapped into a demand for a forum in which creative work can be easily and informally shown"
2. the vlog as a traditional video (or just audio) of someone talking into a camera/microphone.
I like the use of video/audio because we can then leverage the fact everyone has video/audio players such as PC's iPhones and smart-phones.
Thanks for the insightful post. Having built and sold software to enterprise IT for many years, I was not surprised by the results of the survey. It has been interesting to watch the trend over the past 10 years of IT trying to get "better aligned with the business." Despite these efforts, IT (like most shared functions), remains dramatically disconnected from "the business" (whatever "the business" means). As I think about it more, I am developing the view that IT is truly just a symptom of the larger issue which as at the heart of Enterprise 2.0. IT represents the machine of enforcement of the hierarchical and top-down company model will be disrupted over the decades to come. IT (in its modern form) is a way for management to try to control projects and resources and drive the worker bees to get things done. In short, IT is not bad or inept but simply archaic relative to the business world that we'll live in 20-30 years from now. And any system or institution will certainly fight the technologies or innovations that stand to destroy them.
Nick
Web 2.0 represents nothing less than a sea change in the modern workplace; organizations large and small are not ready.
The web world demands better talent at all levels of the organization. It requires people who can: form meaningful relationships from a distance; work across organizational and cultural boundaries; discern good information from bad; focus on the important rather than the extraneous; synthesize enormous amounts of information; and work collaboratively rather than hierarchically.
The web world throws the spotlight on how poorly organizations handle exceptions. The web is designed to handle routine processes and order fulfillment, disintermediating human intervention. It doesn't do a good job of handling nonroutine questions or resolving problems. "Customer service" and "technology" have become oxymorons.
Today's management cadre isn't prepared for dealing with any of this. IT, HR, Legal and other staff divisions need to get with it and start to tackle the underlying issues their organizations face in implementing these technologies rather than to create roadblocks.
IT and HR departments have tried for decades to be viewed as strategic business partners, often without success. Rather than leading the charge, they are seriously underestimating the significance of Web 2.0 in transforming the business world and the workplace. As Millenials join them, this gap will become even more glaring.
History repeats itself. In 1984 we (Lotus Europe) undertook a survey with IT people on the importance and use of PCs and personal productivity software. Result - not needed/not wanted/not important. Less than 10% thought it worth watching! So all our marketing was directed to end users. Working often with fellow travelers HP and Compaq we never had problems filling our European seminar programmes with end users unhappy with poor IT service and support.
"You cannot impose a new technology on an existing organization and expect all other aspects of that organization not to be affected.
You must engineer not only the software and hardware, but also a new social structure. If you do not, your system will be doomed to failure despite any technical merit it might have."
-G2, Human Factors, Univ. of Toronto
(That's the only attribution I've ever had for the quote.)
Good post. Thank you very much for sharing your insights.
I notice you talk about wikis, blogs and SNS, but not about mashups. In my blog (http://businessmashup.blogspot.com) I've applied your comments to mashups and found that they are equally relevant. Mashups have the potential to disrupt applications development organizations in the same way that wikis, blogs and SNS disrupt IT Operations.
Regards,
Kelly A. Shaw, Ph.D.
Analyst
Serena Software