Most business and business units have continually expressed dissatisfaction with IT support and solutions, noting most vigorously that IT just doesn’t understand our business.
As with most business cycles, the time has some in which the business will begin to exert more control over its data, processes, and knowledge. One can reflect on the past introduction of desktop tools and office suites and note how at the introduction of these generally easy to use tools, user in business settings, rapidly began to apply these tools to business solutions. Spreadsheets, in particular, lead a bevy of activities in which users created their own solutions that addressed nagging problems. These solutions, however, were not readily shared. A bi-modal nature of IT began in which large enterprise tools were the domain of IT, while business users created tools that improved local processes.
Advance to today, with the advent of shareable, generally easy to use web based applications. Collaboration tools introduced in early 2000 began to offer businesses more local control over assets as the businesses defined architectures, frameworks, structures and control mechanisms within a broad collaboration environment. Collaboration began the shift towards more business control. Add in self configurable portals, blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, tagging, etc. and the opportunities for business unit creation of local solutions in once again moved to the forefront.
While business units clamor for more self control, and as corporations are pressed to allocate funds to more risky enterprise solutions, a confluence of corporate and business needs are working to reduce demand on IT as a solutions provider.
Next: how businesses can control information.
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