The decline of enterprise influence over IT

IT is becoming more accessible and more personal in many ways.  The combination has many implications. 

1.      If I can get at the services others provide for me from anywhere

2.      If I can customise the access to these services in a way that suits me

3.      If I can aggregate the information that flows to and from these services in a way that suits me

and if I can do all of this from any device, and over any network then the power that corporate IT held over me declines and IT just becomes more like the rest of the world I live in, for example:

1.      Most companies don’t specify which car a salesman has to use they just provide the money to buy it.

2.      They don’t specify or fund the suit he wears, just the standards he has to comply with

3.      They often don’t specify the pen I use, or the type of diary

As standards mature, security becomes more pervasive and applied to content, rather than container, (e.g.  the content of the document is protected, rather than the directory it resides in), IT will go in this direction.  The signs are already there, even though they may be being ignored:

1.      people putting company SIM cards into the latest and greatest personal phones

2.      home computer use for company business

3.      personal email use for company business

4.      personal PDA use

5.      personal broadband and home network use for company business

6.      and of course company resources used extensively for personal use as well

IT Architects better start planning, because like it or not the writings on the wall.  

Jonathan also gets the message load and clear and writes about it on his blog.  Which means Sun gets it!  But lets not forget that if there is one thing that Microsoft understands its how to appeal to the individual.