The next wave of change within IT organisations will be
fuelled by the proliferation of consumer devices,social networkingtools and
cloud-based collaboration services making their way into the
enterprise, says analyst Forrester.
Forrester said "technology populism" will force IT managers to
rethink how they currently evaluate, provision and support
collaborative software and services.
This sea change will present IT departments with a number of
opportunities and challenges that will upend the traditional way
that technology is deployed, said the analyst.
"Technology populism is driven by people's need to interact,"
said Forrester analyst Matthew Brown. "For many employees, the
telephone and e-mail are being replaced by text messaging, instant
messaging and mobile devices such as iPhones and Blackberrys, and
social computing tools such as
Facebook and Wikipedia."
"One leading technology supplier told us that one of its clients
required Sony Playstation support, because many of its younger
employees used Playstations instead of PCs," said Brown.
Drivers behind technology populism include:
Cheap broadband at home and work as personal and professional
lives converge
A new generation of applications based on network interactions.
Companies are learning how to exploit services such as LinkedIn,
Facebook and salesforce.com for business purposes to generate sales
leads, recruit talent, and test and improve products
IT views Web 2.0 favourably. Despite popular opinion, IT leaders
support Web 2.0 technologies in the workplace. A recent Forrester
study showed 72% of IT departments are using some form of Web 2.0
technology
Source: Forrester