Risk-averse IT departments that are too cautious in their
approach toWeb 2.0 technologiessuch as social networking,
online applications and cloud computing could be signing their own
death warrants.
According to business author, lecturer and consultant
Peter Hinssen, IT
functions that ignore or try to prevent employees using such tools
are stifling their businesses' ability to innovate and compete.
"Web 2.0 is really about constant innovation and constant change.
Its impact is going to be tremendous. The worst thing you can do is
think this stuff is just for Generation Y. It is going to be a way
of life for all of us," says Hinssen.
For a start, Web 2.0 forces companies to think beyond the
enterprise. Opening corporate IT to wider networks of partners,
suppliers and the public opens all manner of new business models
and opportunities.
"That is a really good idea because businesses and IT
departments have been staring at their bellybuttons for too long,"
he says. "I think the concept of the
corporate mashup - ad-hoc collaborations between different
parties for mutual gain - will be particularly powerful."
Web 2.0 and cultural change
Some leading companies are embracing these technologies in the
right way, but only where they have successfully changed their
culture, says Hinssen.
"Proctor & Gamble, for instance, has a concept of open
innovation that is fundamental to its way of working and fits well
with the Web 2.0 world. And because it has done the cultural
transformation already, fusing IT and the business, it is much more
capable of realising the potential of these technologies.
Unfortunately, I see very few IT departments doing that."
Web 2.0 also offers opportunities to innovate at relatively low
cost. "You can implement ideas very quickly, see what works and
amplify those that do. At a time when there is huge pressure on
costs coupled with a need to be agile and innovative, Web 2.0, if
used cleverly by the IT department, can really help," says
Hinssen.
"People are going to get used to these technologies extremely
quickly. Nothing ages faster than the web. I think IT is going to
be hit really hard, for example, when people start using the next
generation of Google applications at home, then have to go back
into the office and work on an SAP screen that looks like it was
designed in the 1970s. If the department is to survive, IT has to
be at the cutting edge, or at least up to the bar in terms of what
is going on."
CIO in hot water
Hinssen recounts the story of a recent lunch he had with a CIO
from a large Belgian company. During the meal, the CIO received an
angry call from his CEO who had e-mailed a presentation from home
to his Google Mail address (it was too big for the corporate
inbox). "The CEO was having a problem accessing his Gmail account
at work and the CIO had to tell him access had been blocked on the
corporate system. I could hear the CEO shouting through the phone
receiver from the other side of the table and it wasn't pretty.
"When the CEO of one of the biggest companies in Belgium almost
fires the CIO on the spot because he can't access his Gmail, it is
a clear sign that these types of technology are gaining a broader
foothold in business than simply Generation Y."
So why aren't more IT departments embracing the technology?
Hinssen believes a major factor is the rise of what he calls
"governance thinking" in IT.
"A lot of IT departments are using governance and security as a
shield, so if anything goes wrong they cannot be held liable," he
says. "It is stupid. There is plenty you can do within 'safe'
boundaries. If you say you must wait until a technology is
completely mature, that means businesses shouldn't have done SOA,
ERP, CRM the list goes on.
"What IT needs right now isn't people who focus on what could
happen if things go wrong, but people who think about the
possibilities if things go right."
| Will Google's Wave engulf you? |
|---|
|
When Google announced its integrated online communication and
collaboration platform at the end of May, it put another nail in
the coffin of those IT departments intent on resisting the Web 2.0.
wave.
Google Wave has been designed to aggregate and organise in real
time instant messages, e-mails, blog conversations, social network
feeds and other information from multiple sources into
easy-to-manage, multi-threaded conversations it calls "waves". As the company points out, the predominant form of digital
communication used in business, e-mail, was invented over 40 years
ago and is woefully clumsy and constricting for the way today's
businesses work. Essentially, Google's new platform provides a way to interact
with information and conversations that could dramatically
facilitate collaboration, improve communication and speed up work
processes. Crucially, Google is driving hard to make Wave an open, standard
protocol. It has open-sourced the bulk of the code (meaning
companies can build and host their own private Wave servers), as
well as providing open application programming interfaces (APIs)
that allow developers to extend the platform further or integrate
it with other systems. With the weight of the mighty Google behind it and a huge buzz
of excitement already pervading social networks, websites and the
blogosphere, Wave has considerable momentum and could be just the
push many businesses need to take Web 2.0 seriously. The question
is, will IT departments be poised to surf the wave, or be drowned
under it? |
Wrong type of fear
Indeed, worrying whether a technology is secure, reliable or
mature enough is the wrong type of fear, Hinssen believes. "IT
departments should be much more worried about being put out of the
picture," he says. And if IT fails to grasp the opportunities of
Web 2.0, many businesses will simply subvert or sideline the
function, he warns.
"For example, the marketing department of one large
pharmaceutical company asked IT for a fancy Web 2.0 collaboration
environment and was told it was on the roadmap, but would not be in
place for another 23 months. So the marketing people, who needed
the tool the following week, used an open web platform instead.
Soon, they were sharing confidential drug discovery pipeline
information between Asia, Europe and the US on hundreds of these
collaborative platforms. And IT had no idea this was going on.
"Of course, that is totally unacceptable. But if IT wants to get
some control over the use of Web 2.0, it is going to have to be
ahead of the business in terms of its use. Otherwise the gap
between business and IT is only going to widen," he says.
"If that happens, eventually IT will degrade to a completely
operational role and will probably be outsourced. If you want to
keep IT in-house - as I think most companies should - you have to
put innovation capability inside the department and attract people
with the right skills."
Future of the IT function
In his book, Business/IT
Fusion, Hinssen outlines his vision of an IT function that is
much more closely merged with the rest of the business, as well as
setting out how he proposes companies get there.
"We need a nimbler kind of IT - less technical, more
business-focused, more about innovation than execution. That will
require different people to those we generally see in IT today. Too
many firms still have deeply technical, seemingly semi-autistic
nerds in the IT department. We are going to have to find or develop
people who are more broad-minded, more generalist, more innovative
and more forward-looking," he says.
"Web 2.0 isn't some passing fad, it is the beginning of a
continuous flow of opportunities. The IT department needs to be a
permanent observatory that is always on the lookout for how we can
use technological innovation - and for that we need a different
team," he says.
And for those who think all this still sounds too radical,
Hinssen echoes the words of US army chief General Eric Shinseki:
"If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even
less."