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Users Have It Their Way

06/01/2009

Gartner Group predicts that by 2010, end-user preferences will decide as much as half of all software, hardware, and services acquisitions made by IT. Increasingly, people are resisting what they see as cookie-cutter and often out-dated technology dictated by IT. This is especially true of the young, tech-savvy knowledge workers – "Generation Me" – who want to use their stuff and expect their content and their preferences served up anytime/anywhere.

This consumerization of IT will change how organizations source and support productivity tools for their end-users. User concerns become a key input into IT planning, and end-users become a key constituency to be consulted before major projects are undertaken. "You no longer plan from the top down but from the user up," says Unisys GOIS President, Tony Doye.

While the upside is a more productive and more empowered workforce, this trend does have risks. Anywhere/anytime presents both physical and data risks. Broad hardware and software choice brings with it complexity and difficulty of support. "A new paradigm is needed to address this trend, self-service/self-heal as a first line of support is not only cost-effective but in-line with what this new end-user desires," says Doye, "as to securing the mobile worker, the physical aspect remains a challenge but secure cloud computing is here today and will be the enabling technology of anywhere/anytime. With recent breakthroughs in 'stealthing' data at rest and in motion the vision of a truly secure cloud is now reality."