Business Service Management Hub

The Hub Commentary_

Nice article regarding the transformation of IT.  I would disagree with the transformation being fueled by the consumerization of IT, but rather the competition that has come into play with the consumerization of IT.  This is the New IT as I call it in many of my posts.

Transformation is already happening and IT is already in the business and it is this competition from the outside presenting the business with options to get things done in a manner that IT has not been able to present services.  It is this competition and requirement to speak in terms of cost, value, right sourced deployment options, driving business growth, etc. that is the catalyst for change in IT.

Why does anyone do anything?  Because someone else is out there working to do it better and faster than the current supplier – competition for change.

The role of IT is no doubt changing and will be a manager of service and integrator of how those services are delivered to be effective in the future.

How is your IT Transforming?

Michele

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As technology becomes easier to use, it becomes more complex internally. That means IT is less necessary in some ways and more essential in others.

There is a paradox in the technology that IT employs and deploys. As it becomes easier to use and simpler to manage, it is actually increasing in complexity. And there is a paradox within this paradox concerning how IT relates to the business. More on that in a bit.  (Read Full Article…)

Amazon recently announced a new cloud storage service called Amazon Cloud Drive. It gives consumers 5GB of free storage and additional storage is $1 a gig/per month. Not a bad deal actually for the convenience of having your stuff at hand, but what Amazon was offering wasn’t just free storage.

They also threw in a way to play your music online and a little upload tool to get it there. They even sweetened the deal early on by offering 20 GB of storage instead of 5 if you bought one album from the Amazon MP3 Store, plus they store Amazon MP3 store purchases on your Cloud Drive automatically by default and don’t count those purchases against your storage total.

It’s not the best online storage out there, but with the player, it’s pretty darn convenient.

So why should you care? You’re not dealing with consumers, right? Well, actually you might be and here’s why.

What a tool like Amazon Cloud Drive does it bring the idea of cloud storage to the masses. While there are plenty of tools that offer online storage now including Dropbox and Box.net, and these services are doing quite well, Amazon brings a level of selling power to the table that these smaller companies can’t match. They might not have the same feature set (not by a long shot), but they are inside a site many people go to regularly, and as such might be more likely to be exposed to.

And those same consumers are more than likely your employees. When they see the simplicity and ease of use, they might even start leaving work files on the drive so they access them when they’re not in the office and they’ll begin to see the convenience the cloud brings.

And when they do, (this is beginning to sound like ‘If You Give a Moose a Muffin‘), chances are they going to want that convenience at work.

You see where I’m going with this now. As cloud computing services like the Amazon Cloud Drive become more available, users will begin (if they haven’t already) to demand that same kind of simplicity and ease of use in the enterprise.

And you need to be ready because as my recent post (Survey Says Managing Cloud is Chief Concern) indicated, while IT may get they have to go to the cloud, most businesses don’t seem to understand that there is management component involved, even outside the firewall.

So follow those intrepid employees to the Cloud. Just make sure you have tools to monitor these services in place when you do.

Photo by getinet on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.

The Hub Commentary_

Consumer technology trends will always push that of the internal IT organizations.  The next generation of workforce I think of as the “me generation”.  When did we shift from getting a job and doing the job to me the worker defining the job and how it is done?  I do find this curious and am a proponent of the flexible work environment.

With everything there comes a need for balance:  flexibility and control, the heart of any good business service management practice.  The first example of social media driving sales is an excellent example.  That same sort of internal community building can be useful in finding pockets of expertise with business and productivity applications.  You are creating a big presentation, who has done something similar? who might have an example? who could help with this tricky macro?  The possibilities are endless.

I do, however, see a significant risk to the business when everyone works the way they choose to work, with their own devices.  Where is the data? How secure is the transport? Are you losing your IP when these workers leave the company?

The balancing act of cost, risk and service value will become increasingly more relevant as the conversation continues.

How flexible is your business and how do you manage risk?

Michele

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Social media’s emergence as a key business app is just one of the trends that have led to a point of no return on consumer IT. Dell’s Paul D’Arcy explains — and shares how CIOs can plan for and benefit from the consumerization of IT.   (Read Full Article…)