Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.