It wouldn’t be unfair to say now is not the time to be in IT. Mass consumerization of technology is leaving IT leadersat the mercy of users who demand their iPads be connected or demand 100-Mb connections and unlimited attachment sizes and mailboxes. My mother gets this at home – why can’t we have this in the corporate environment?
Security is a nightmare, everyone wants access from all places, all devices and at all times. Throw in the spate of security breaches and you have to ask – who would want to be a security professional?
Add to this the march toward cloud computing. Power lies in the hands of business leaders and users who can now bypass the carefully structured governance of IT organizations and just go out and plug in new servers and applications.
CIOs today face incredible conflicting challenges. Deliver ever more with less, and almost always with no new resources, be risk averse, secure and compliant but also bend to the rise of consumerization, and understand business user needs BUT don’t tell them what to do.
Many IT leaders could be forgiven for feeling marginalized as they jump to every change in beat by the business and have to tear up their long-planned IT governance structure to cope with cloud computing and greater user choice.
But while some will despair, the strategic forward-looking IT leaders will see opportunity. An opportunity to be the trusted advisor to business on how to enable change and transformation. IT should be envisioning business needs and provide technology ideas to support these changes.