Is Enterprise IT More Difficult To Manage Now Than Ever?

colinneagle writes: Who's old enough to remember when the best technology was found at work, while at home we got by with clunky home computers and pokey dial-up modems? Those days are gone, and they don't look like they're ever coming back.

Instead, today's IT department is scrambling to deliver technology offerings that won't get laughed at — or, just as bad, ignored — by a modern workforce raised on slick smartphones and consumer services powered by data centers far more powerful than the one their company uses. And those services work better and faster than the programs they offer, partly because consumers don't have to worry about all the constraints that IT does, from security and privacy to, you know, actually being profitable. Plus, while IT still has to maintain all the old desktop apps, it also needs to make sure mobile users can do whatever they need to from anywhere at any time.

And that's just the users. IT's issues with corporate peers and leaders may be even rockier. Between shadow IT and other Software-as-a-Service, estimates say that 1 in 5 technology operations dollars are now being spent outside the IT department, and many think that figure is actually much higher. New digital initiatives are increasingly being driven by marketing and other business functions, not by IT. Today's CMOs often outrank the CIO, whose role may be constrained to keeping the infrastructure running at the lowest possible cost instead of bringing strategic value to the organization. Hardly a recipe for success and influence.

Comments

Cloud

[Archangel Michael]

The cost of the Cloud is cheap. And for IT, we just say "not as secure, but if you're okay with that, go ahead" and when the Cloud services fail, or get breached or whatever, the CIO can simply say "not my fault, that was your choice". The real cost is hidden.

Re:Cloud

[Anon-Admin]

You IT security is only as good as your control of the hardware!

I dont care if it is Windows or Linux, if someone other than the company personal can get to the hardware they can access your system and all the data in it. When you outsource your services to a data center provider you are trusting there security, there hiring practices, and there employees. Ill tell you right now, having worked for several of the BIG data center providers, most of them dont do a background checks. I have worked with many that were felons and in three cases worked with people convicted of credit fraud as well as hacking.

How many CIO's/CTO's/etc ever investigate the data center provider to determine there hiring practices and who has access to the hardware they will be storing the virtual machines on?

IT people say is it insecure because we know that #1) the person making the decision does not understand technology and #2) s/he simply went with the lowest bidder.

Not in my experience ...

[CaptainDork]

... at all.

My management started saying, "THE CLOUD," over and over again, like consumers were saying, "iPad!."

I made damn sure that my objections were documented via email at every step as I cheerfully participated in assisted suicide.

Sure enough, about 8 months later (after management got a hands-on physics lesson about propagation delay), the cloud wasn't there. People were on my ass big time.

I called the cloud center and told them to, "Do that fail-over thing to the backup site in Oklahoma and stuff," and they said that the switch-over was included in the catastrophic failure.

I got myself a cup of coffee and one of the managers got in my face and demanded that we implement the backup plan.

I told him, "Sir ... our Plan B is Plan A."

So, they bought me some servers and stuff and I'm running things from my fucking computer room.