The Five Lessons of IT Consumerization

15/12/2011

By Ricky Hudson, CEO of Star

Consumerization of IT is happening with or without the support of the IT department and this is creating more complexity for businesses. In fact, as more employees bring their own gadgets/devices (BYOD) into the workplace and use social media to communicate and collaborate with their networks and customers, so the consumerization gap is starting to widen – as IT struggles to keep apace of the user adoption and to provide the appropriate levels of support.

As these consumer tools become more important for reaching customers, prospects and business partners, businesses have to wake up...

...quickly to new approaches to competing in their marketplaces.

When we look at gadgets, such as smart phones and tablet PCs, in the workplace and then add into the mix the consumer-inspired social media trends, we can see a complexity for IT departments that simply did not exist a few years ago. Supporting and managing this trend holds many lessons and opportunities for organisations. So, embracing what’s now possible with cloud computing is something that most companies would do well to consider sooner rather than later and to do so at the very top.

The CEO must be involved in the business transformation opportunity on offer because the IT department simply won’t do this without a mandate from the very top. The problem with IT departments across all companies is that most of them don’t have the skills, the motivation or the time to take the consumerization of IT seriously. But they do run the risk of becoming victims of it if they don’t have a strategy for cloud computing. Choices will be taken away from them and decisions will be made for them.

Lesson 1 – They’re Behind You!
Visibility of what gadgets or... continued on page two >

 

 

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