Serving IT with a Side of Hash Browns
/This blog post is sponsored by the Enterprise CIO Forum and HP.
Since it’s where I started my career, I often ponder what it would be like to work in the IT department today. This morning, instead of sitting in a cubicle with no window view other than the one Bill Gates gave us, I’m sitting in a booth by a real window, albeit one with a partially obstructed view of the parking lot, at a diner eating a two-egg omelette with a side of hash browns.
But nowadays, it’s possible that I’m still sitting amongst my fellow IT workers. Perhaps the older gentleman to my left is verifying last night’s database load using his laptop. Maybe the younger woman to my right is talking into her Bluetooth earpiece with a business analyst working on an ad hoc report. And the couple in the corner could be struggling to understand the technology requirements of the C-level executive they’re meeting with, who’s now vocalizing his displeasure about sitting in the high chair.
It’s possible that everyone thinks I am updating the status of an IT support ticket on my tablet based on the mobile text alert I just received. Of course, it’s also possible that all of us are just eating breakfast while I’m also writing this blog post about IT.
However, as Joel Dobbs recently blogged, the IT times are a-changin’ — and faster than ever before since, thanks to the two-egg IT omelette of mobile technologies and cloud providers, IT no longer only happens in the IT department. IT is everywhere now.
“There is a tendency to compartmentalize various types of IT,” Bruce Guptill recently blogged, “in order to make them more understandable and conform to budgeting practices. But the core concept/theme/result of mobility really is ubiquity of IT — the same technology, services, and capabilities regardless of user and asset location.”
Regardless of how much you have embraced the consumerization of IT, some of your IT happens outside of your IT department, and some IT tasks are performed by people who not only don’t work in IT, but possibly don’t even work for your organization.
“While systems integration was once the big concern,” Judy Redman recently blogged, “today’s CIOs need to look to services integration. Companies today need to obtain services from multiple vendors so that they can get best-of-breed solutions, cost efficiencies, and the flexibility needed to meet ever-changing and ever-more-demanding business needs.”
With its increasingly service-oriented and ubiquitous nature, it’s not too far-fetched to imagine that in the near future of IT, the patrons of a Wi-Fi-enabled diner could be your organization’s new IT department, serving your IT with a side of hash browns.
This blog post is sponsored by the Enterprise CIO Forum and HP.
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