Controlling v Enabling - a tech rant

@nayanjadeja just posted at http://india-tech-trends.blogspot.com/2012/01/mdm-cloud-natural-fit.html a perceptive analysis that "consumerization" is driving corporate technology trends.

It's a subject dear to my heart - after thirty years in business, most of them closely involved with the technology side of the business, I, for one, think this is a very welcome development. But I'm also acutely aware that most CTOs/CIOs do not share this view.

I prefer the term "democratisation" to "consumerization" (btw, why is one spelt with an 's' and the other with a 'z'?). The latter appears (to my ear, at least) to be a more pejorative description. What is actually happening is that users are voting with their wallets to adopt these new devices that although expensive, are easy to use, sexy and fun - three adjectives that are normally incapable of being applied to corporate-decreed hardware and software.

They are finally getting a say in technology. They understand its capabilities far better than they used to (because these devices are, by and large, easy to use) and they are slowly becoming smarter users of technology.

And, frankly, this terrifies the average CTO/CIO who sees his turf being eroded, his territorial jurisdiction being trampled over, his ability to control multi-million dollar hardware and software purchasing budgets being blown away by multiple 'purchase managers' who bring their own hardware to work, using parallel software infrastructure that costs them nothing, and, as a result, are often more comfortable with this new way of life than they are ever likely to be with outmoded corporate technology infrastructure that takes months, if not years, to upgrade and move with the times.

So the old bogeys of security and compliance are trotted out, in the hope that

a) no one realizes that there is no such animal as a secure corporate network;

b) no one knows that most successful hacks take place via social engineering, rather than cracking the corporate firewall;

c) no one remembers the last time a corporate-owned piece of hardware failed (they do, you know, they're not immune to that);

d) no-one cares enough to compare the true cost of ownership between corporate-owned infrastructure and cloud-based 'leased' infrastructure; and

e) the non-techie powers-that-be don't understand the gibberish the CTO spouts anyway, and so will continue to happily turn a blind eye to their goings-on and let them get on with not doing whatever it is they say they're doing.

I still maintain a toehold in the corporate world via a once-a-week stint at a managing consultancy firm. While there each Wednesday morning, I struggle with Lotus Notes - a clunky interface that is stuck in the eighties - and Windows 7 (which, while it is certainly an improvement over Vista, is no Lion) and an ugly Lenovo laptop with an unresponsive trackpad and navigation buttons scattered over the place in a decidedly unergonomic configuration (and don't get me started on that joystick red button).

So, I sigh with nostalgia for my Macbook Pro sitting at home, and turn to my iPad and whiz through my GMail+Dropbox+Salesforce setup that helps me run my own business with a level of efficiency and at a price point that should make a CEO weep with envy.

[As an aside, when I implemented Google Apps for Business at my last company, we did a TCO evaluation for 3 years and discovered that for a 200-person installation, Google Apps saved us 50%. Read that number again: 50%.]

And then I look around at the cabin I share with 3 others, and, guess what? Yep, all 3 of them have iPads sitting on their desks next to their corporate-issued Lenovos.

The old-school CTO sees his role as a controller of technology. The smart one understands he needs to be an enabler.

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