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Consumer Technologies Driving IT
fiannaFailMan writes to point out The Economist's reporting on the way consumer-driven software products are increasingly making their presence felt in the corporate world. Some CIOs are embracing the influx while others continue to resist it. From the article: "In the past, innovation was driven by the military or corporate markets. But now the consumer market, with its vast economies of scale and appetite for novelty, leads the way. Compared with the staid corporate-software industry, using these services is like 'receiving technology from an advanced civilization,' says [one university CIO]... [M]ost IT bosses, especially at large organizations, tend to be skeptical of consumer technologies and often ban them outright. Employees, in return, tend to ignore their IT departments. Many young people... use services such as Skype to send instant messages or make free calls while in the office. FaceTime, a Californian firm that specializes in making such consumer applications safe for companies, found in a recent survey that more than half of employees in their 20s and 30s admitted to installing such software over the objections of IT staff."
Maybe that skepticism is there for a reason. Technology developed by the military, universities etc.. is usually focus on security, stability etc... Thats something thats not always true for consumer technology where short development cycles and high profitability drives the technology.
The best test environment is production. - Me
chrome://browser/content/browser.xul
The Economist's reporting on the way consumer-driven software products are increasingly making their presence felt in the corporate world. Some CIOs are embracing the influx while others continue to resist it.
When you lock down the machines, of course people are going to be driven to web services like the apps that companies like google offer (mail / office / etc ) .
Push Button, Receive Bacon
1979: Hiding that Apple ][ with VisiCalc that the MIS staff has forbidden because users can't be trusted to produce accurate reports without someone with a Masters doing the coding. 1984: Sneaking PCs into an all-mainframe shop by having the customer buy them as parts, on seperate POs. 1985: Networking those PCs peer-to-peer over 1MB coax so they could share a "big" 40 MB hard drive and a "fast" 6PPM laser printer. That was the last generation of revolution. Now comes the software revolution, where disposable widgets take the place of $450 office "productivity" packages. It's a glorious dawn, and I'm laughing at all you young turks thinking you're going to control it. Embrace and control it, lads. Never forbid anything unless you have something better.
A few points:
1. Your symantec doesnt catch everything, even if its in its definitions files. It may run before the av can scan it. It may come encrypted. It may be part of a larger spyware payload. "Edge" is buzzwords for "buy our scanning proxy." Its not 100% protection.
2. Your system is locked down not because the "helpdesk monkey" enjoys visiting self-entitled misanthropes like yourself but to keep unauthorized software off your machine. Your manager doesnt want you playing games all day, IT doesnt want to image your computer every week because of all the spyware you download, and the helpdesk doesnt need more of your whiney complaints. Not to mention legal/finance dont want to get stuck with a bill/lawsuit for the software you pirate and put on a machine that isnt yours.
3. The partition idea has already been done. Its called network drives. You still are responsible for the PC.
At the end of the day, when you screw up a perfectly good machine because youre so much smarter than your IT deparment and its monkeys, you end up calling them, expecting them to fix it, and blaming them. Now multiply yourself x250 people and think about why you have to wait so long for service or why some of these policies exist.
>Get a clue and a plan and have a modicum of control - not the communist variety of control.
Lastly, this isn't soviet russia. Dont like the work environment? Quit.
Nothing catches everythhing. Only clueless CIOs and non-technical middle IT managers think that happens. Security is a state of mind - not a reality. There will always be someone smarter with more time or more resources that can beat your "best practices".
2. Your system is locked down not because the "helpdesk monkey" enjoys visiting self-entitled misanthropes like yourself but to keep unauthorized software off your machine. Your manager doesnt want you playing games all day, IT doesnt want to image your computer every week because of all the spyware you download, and the helpdesk doesnt need more of your whiney complaints. Not to mention legal/finance dont want to get stuck with a bill/lawsuit for the software you pirate and put on a machine that isnt yours.
So you can't place - as I said before -a modicum of controls on users and still allow basic functionality? You can't set SMS to go look for installed programs and remove anything not in the list? (you can - I've done it)
At the end of the day, when you screw up a perfectly good machine because youre so much smarter than your IT deparment and its monkeys, you end up calling them, expecting them to fix it, and blaming them. Now multiply yourself x250 people and think about why you have to wait so long for service or why some of these policies exist.
Been there - done that, burned the damn t-shirt. Started an ISP back in '94 as a one person shop for a year. Did IT support in various mechanisms since then. I don't know much, but I have done support, and I'd challenge you to find a more difficult support role then the guy on the phone in the pre-windows 95 easy dialup days supporting Windows 3.11 and Trumpet winsock, getting blamed for every problem they have after they installed your floppy disk and doing it over the phone.
Lastly, this isn't soviet russia. Dont like the work environment? Quit.
Brilliant. Don't try to change anything. Don't try to make it better - just throw in the ol towel if you don't like it. And we wonder why we're chastized by non-IT folks for jumping jobs.
Only problem with your story is that's not exactly how it happened. Of course you'll get a book and movie deal out of it, and slashdot will rip it to shreds for historical inaccuracies. In the mean time you'll be laughing all the way to the bank because most of your audiance didn't grow up in those eras.