Author: Toni Bowers
If you’d like to develop a better relationship with your CIO, you might want to check out this list of things your boss doesn’t want to hear.
Mary K. Pratt wrote a good article for Computerworld after she asked a group of 2008 Premier 100 IT Leaders to talk about the kinds of messages they never want to hear from their staffers.
Here’s the list she compiled from the conversations:
Don’t talk only about the technology and not about the business. These CIOs say that technology-for-technology’s-sake won’t get you far. You should couch any technology discussions in terms of what it would mean to the business.
Don’t be too enamored with one solution. Most IT people have a technology preference (just witness some of the fights we’ve had in TechRepublic’s forum over the years about Linux vs. Windows). Be open to all solutions.
Don’t operate from the stance that something is impossible. No CIO wants to hear this word. A task may be insurmountable, but the best way to get that across is to present the challenges in a logical way. Let the CIO come to the conclusion about whether it’s still worth pursuing.
CIOs don’t want to hear you express bad opinions about your colleagues. CIOs want their employees to work out problems on their own.
No surprises. This seems a little contradictory to point number 4 to me. Pratt quotes Ian S. Patterson, CIO at Scottrade Inc., a St. Louis-based online brokerage firm, as saying he “always prefers to hear news — good and bad — directly from his workers.” How would one address the fact that a colleague may be causing delays in a project without expressing a bad opinion? I guess it’s all in the way you say it.
Monday, August 4, 2008
When IT pros go bad
Author: Toni Bowers
The recent case of the network administrator who shut down San Francisco’s FiberWAN network may cause some corporate executives to initiate unneeded policies. Would that be yet another example of too much time spent on something that, in reality, rarely happens?
The Terry Childs case has been a wake-up call to corporate executives across the globe. (Childs, a network administrator for San Francisco’s Department of Telecommunications and Information Services, is currently in jail and being held on $5 million bail for allegedly altering the city’s FiberWAN network system to deny service to authorized users and setting up devices that would allow unauthorized service to the system.)
I would guess that few executives (and staff-level end users for that matter) had any idea of the power one lone IT pro could have until now. Since the mindset of most employees is that IT is the department you call when you can’t access your files or your e-mail is running slow, it’s pretty disconcerting for them to find out that, depending on their position in the company, IT pros pretty much hold the keys to the kingdom.
So now, of course, the media is feeding this newly found fear in the hearts of corporate executives everywhere.
Last Monday, in the Globe and Mail, a story by Rebecca Dube brought to light some other recent cases of disgruntled IT pros wreaking havoc on their employers. The stories included the Australian engineer who was sentenced to two years in prison for hacking into a waste-management system and causing millions of liters of raw sewage to be dumped into rivers and parks. And Roger Duronio who was found guilty of computer sabotage and securities fraud for creating a logic bomb that took down 2,000 of UBS PaineWebber’s servers.
Then there was Alan Giang Tran who, after he was fired from his job at an airport limousine company, hacked into his former employer’s network and wiped out the customer database.
You just know that company leaders are going to be instituting policies to protect themselves against any kind of retaliation like this. There are a couple of reasons such policies could be a waste of time. For one, those executives don’t understand enough about IT to know how to form a policy to curtail its activities or access.
Second, if you think about all of the opportunity IT has to manipulate or destroy data or shut down networks, it’s pretty amazing how rarely it happens. So this could be another instance of putting precious time into creating policies because of something that happens maybe 1% of the time.
Now I could be wrong. You could all be out there using the skills of your job to funnel streams of money into your Swiss bank accounts. But I don’t think so.
So let’s discuss. In your jobs, do you have the power to paralyze the company you work for? Why do you think some people take advantage of this power while most don’t?
The recent case of the network administrator who shut down San Francisco’s FiberWAN network may cause some corporate executives to initiate unneeded policies. Would that be yet another example of too much time spent on something that, in reality, rarely happens?
The Terry Childs case has been a wake-up call to corporate executives across the globe. (Childs, a network administrator for San Francisco’s Department of Telecommunications and Information Services, is currently in jail and being held on $5 million bail for allegedly altering the city’s FiberWAN network system to deny service to authorized users and setting up devices that would allow unauthorized service to the system.)
I would guess that few executives (and staff-level end users for that matter) had any idea of the power one lone IT pro could have until now. Since the mindset of most employees is that IT is the department you call when you can’t access your files or your e-mail is running slow, it’s pretty disconcerting for them to find out that, depending on their position in the company, IT pros pretty much hold the keys to the kingdom.
So now, of course, the media is feeding this newly found fear in the hearts of corporate executives everywhere.
Last Monday, in the Globe and Mail, a story by Rebecca Dube brought to light some other recent cases of disgruntled IT pros wreaking havoc on their employers. The stories included the Australian engineer who was sentenced to two years in prison for hacking into a waste-management system and causing millions of liters of raw sewage to be dumped into rivers and parks. And Roger Duronio who was found guilty of computer sabotage and securities fraud for creating a logic bomb that took down 2,000 of UBS PaineWebber’s servers.
Then there was Alan Giang Tran who, after he was fired from his job at an airport limousine company, hacked into his former employer’s network and wiped out the customer database.
You just know that company leaders are going to be instituting policies to protect themselves against any kind of retaliation like this. There are a couple of reasons such policies could be a waste of time. For one, those executives don’t understand enough about IT to know how to form a policy to curtail its activities or access.
Second, if you think about all of the opportunity IT has to manipulate or destroy data or shut down networks, it’s pretty amazing how rarely it happens. So this could be another instance of putting precious time into creating policies because of something that happens maybe 1% of the time.
Now I could be wrong. You could all be out there using the skills of your job to funnel streams of money into your Swiss bank accounts. But I don’t think so.
So let’s discuss. In your jobs, do you have the power to paralyze the company you work for? Why do you think some people take advantage of this power while most don’t?
Monday, July 28, 2008
10 tools that will make you a Twitter power user
Author: Jason Hiner
Twitter can be powerful for professional networking and collective intelligence. Here are ten tools that can help you become a Twitter power user and take full advantage of Twitter for business and professional use.
In my article Is Twitter the most important development on the Web in 2008? I wrote about the fact that Twitter has made me better informed and better connected with my colleagues and peers in the technology business. For those who are using Twitter — or plan to start — here are 10 tools that can help you get the most out of it for professional networking.
1. Summize
Since Twitter is a great way to do a quick scan of what people are talking about, wouldn’t it be great to search it to see what people are saying about a specific topic? A site called Summize came up with a nice little search tool to do that.
In fact, the tool is so good that Twitter bought Summize earlier this month. The URL is now search.twitter.com but, at the time that I’m writing this, it hasn’t actually been integrated into Twitter’s default search so you’ll have to bookmark that URL or go to summize.com (which redirects to it). Using this to do searches on specific tech topics that interest you is also a great way to find people to follow who have the same interests.
2. Tweetburner
One of the most common things to do on Twitter is share URLs to interesting stuff. But, since Twitter posts are limited to 140 characters it’s best to use Snurl or TinyURL or similar services to shorten the URL. While all of these services work just fine, the best one to use is Tweetburner because it gives you “personal statistics” to show the number of clicks that your links generated.
3. Twitter Mobile
At least half of my Twittering is done from my cell phone, and I’m not alone. Back in December, there was a big stink when T-Mobile was suspected of blocking its customers from using Twitter. There were a bunch of T-Mobile customers who were ready to drop the carrier over this before the issue got resolved — that’s how important it was to them to be able to Twitter from their cell phone. While there are lots of mobile clients like TinyTwitter, Twitterific, TwitterBerry, and TreoTwit, I still prefer to just use the mobile version of the Twitter site: http://m.twitter.com.
4. Ping.fm
If you also do status updates on other social networks in addition to Twitter, then Ping.fm can be a great time-saver because it allows you to write a message and then it can post it to your account on Twitter plus simultaneously post it to Linkedin, Facebook, Plaxo and several other networks.
5. TwitPic
Another popular thing to do on Twitter is post photos. While you can put photos on Flickr or other photo sharing sites and then post shortened URLs, the better way to do it is to simply use TwitPic, which will allow to upload the photo and write the Twitter post and then it will post it with the URL automatically shortened for you. You can even use TwitPic from many smartphones. For example, earlier this week I posted a photo of the LCD TV I just set up in my office.
6. TweetAhead
If you’re not caught up in stream-of-consciousness, but want to use Twitter to announce something at a specific time (or automatically post an update at a time when you won’t have access to a computer or phone), then you can use TweetAhead to schedule a post at a specific time.
7. TweetStats
If you want to get serious — or at least scientific– about your Twitter use, then TweetStats will give you lots of data to see, for example, how many times you posted this month compared to last month, what times you tend to post the most, which users you respond to most often, and which tools you use the most to post on Twitter.
8. Twist
Twitter can be used as a research tool to see what users are saying about a certain topic, that’s where Summize (now Twitter Search) is handy, but you can also use Twitter for trend data to see how many posts there are about a certain topic by using Twist. Twist lets you see the number of posts for big topics over the past week or month, and you can even compare topics by simply entering multiple terms separated by commas. For example, a popular search right now is “iphone, blackberry” (see results in graph below).
9. TwitterLocal
Want to see if any of your local connections are on Twitter or find Twitterers in your local metro area? TwitterLocal allows you to search by area code for posts from Twitterers within 1 mile or as far away as 20 miles.
10. Twitterholic
Who has the largest following on Twitter? You can find the top 100 on Twitterholic. At the time that I’m writing this, the top of the list is dominated by a lot of personalities from the tech world, including notables such as Leo LaPorte, John Dvorak, and Guy Kawasaki. Twitterholic is a good place to find some top tech thinkers that you might be interested in following.
So, that’s my list. I hope it helps you put Twitter to use for professional purposes.
Twitter can be powerful for professional networking and collective intelligence. Here are ten tools that can help you become a Twitter power user and take full advantage of Twitter for business and professional use.
In my article Is Twitter the most important development on the Web in 2008? I wrote about the fact that Twitter has made me better informed and better connected with my colleagues and peers in the technology business. For those who are using Twitter — or plan to start — here are 10 tools that can help you get the most out of it for professional networking.
1. Summize
Since Twitter is a great way to do a quick scan of what people are talking about, wouldn’t it be great to search it to see what people are saying about a specific topic? A site called Summize came up with a nice little search tool to do that.
In fact, the tool is so good that Twitter bought Summize earlier this month. The URL is now search.twitter.com but, at the time that I’m writing this, it hasn’t actually been integrated into Twitter’s default search so you’ll have to bookmark that URL or go to summize.com (which redirects to it). Using this to do searches on specific tech topics that interest you is also a great way to find people to follow who have the same interests.
2. Tweetburner
One of the most common things to do on Twitter is share URLs to interesting stuff. But, since Twitter posts are limited to 140 characters it’s best to use Snurl or TinyURL or similar services to shorten the URL. While all of these services work just fine, the best one to use is Tweetburner because it gives you “personal statistics” to show the number of clicks that your links generated.
3. Twitter Mobile
At least half of my Twittering is done from my cell phone, and I’m not alone. Back in December, there was a big stink when T-Mobile was suspected of blocking its customers from using Twitter. There were a bunch of T-Mobile customers who were ready to drop the carrier over this before the issue got resolved — that’s how important it was to them to be able to Twitter from their cell phone. While there are lots of mobile clients like TinyTwitter, Twitterific, TwitterBerry, and TreoTwit, I still prefer to just use the mobile version of the Twitter site: http://m.twitter.com.
4. Ping.fm
If you also do status updates on other social networks in addition to Twitter, then Ping.fm can be a great time-saver because it allows you to write a message and then it can post it to your account on Twitter plus simultaneously post it to Linkedin, Facebook, Plaxo and several other networks.
5. TwitPic
Another popular thing to do on Twitter is post photos. While you can put photos on Flickr or other photo sharing sites and then post shortened URLs, the better way to do it is to simply use TwitPic, which will allow to upload the photo and write the Twitter post and then it will post it with the URL automatically shortened for you. You can even use TwitPic from many smartphones. For example, earlier this week I posted a photo of the LCD TV I just set up in my office.
6. TweetAhead
If you’re not caught up in stream-of-consciousness, but want to use Twitter to announce something at a specific time (or automatically post an update at a time when you won’t have access to a computer or phone), then you can use TweetAhead to schedule a post at a specific time.
7. TweetStats
If you want to get serious — or at least scientific– about your Twitter use, then TweetStats will give you lots of data to see, for example, how many times you posted this month compared to last month, what times you tend to post the most, which users you respond to most often, and which tools you use the most to post on Twitter.
8. Twist
Twitter can be used as a research tool to see what users are saying about a certain topic, that’s where Summize (now Twitter Search) is handy, but you can also use Twitter for trend data to see how many posts there are about a certain topic by using Twist. Twist lets you see the number of posts for big topics over the past week or month, and you can even compare topics by simply entering multiple terms separated by commas. For example, a popular search right now is “iphone, blackberry” (see results in graph below).
9. TwitterLocal
Want to see if any of your local connections are on Twitter or find Twitterers in your local metro area? TwitterLocal allows you to search by area code for posts from Twitterers within 1 mile or as far away as 20 miles.
10. Twitterholic
Who has the largest following on Twitter? You can find the top 100 on Twitterholic. At the time that I’m writing this, the top of the list is dominated by a lot of personalities from the tech world, including notables such as Leo LaPorte, John Dvorak, and Guy Kawasaki. Twitterholic is a good place to find some top tech thinkers that you might be interested in following.
So, that’s my list. I hope it helps you put Twitter to use for professional purposes.
Is Twitter the most important development on the Web in 2008?
Author: Jason Hiner
For those who have never used Twitter, my biggest challenge here might be giving you a concise definition. Here are some of the common ones that you’ll hear:
* It’s micro-blogging
* It’s a 140-character note about what you’re doing
* It’s an up-to-the-minute status update for all your friends
* It’s a great way to keep up with what your colleagues are working on
* It’s a very timely source for news and links
* It’s like being part of the Borg but you choose your own Collective
Here’s how I explained Twitter to my mom a couple weeks ago:
“It’s like a text message or an instant message — limited to 140 characters — that you send to everyone on your buddy list. You use it when you’re doing something interesting, you have some news to share, or you have a Web link that you want to bring to people’s attention.”
f you don’t think that sounds very exciting or useful, you’re not alone. A lot of the most active Twitterers I know didn’t take to it right away. There’s an interesting phenomenon with Twitter where a user gives it a first try and then sort of abandons it, while still occasionly checking on the messages posted by the people on their contact list. Then, the user eventually starts doing and seeing stuff and thinking, “I should post that Twitter.” Pretty soon they actually start remembering to post that stuff, either from a Web browser or a cell phone, and before long they are hooked.
Five reasons why Twitter matters
1. Twitter provides a method for tapping into the brainwaves of people whose thoughts and opinions are valuable to you.
2. It can help you catch breaking news very quickly. It’s the digital equivalent of word-of-mouth.
3. It can allow you to communicate and network with people that you’ve wanted to meet.
4. Twitter lets you keep track of colleagues, see what they’re working on, and better understand what they do.
5. It can serve as a messaging tool to quickly communicate with multiple contacts.
Twitter for IT
I primarily use Twitter for three things:
1. Posting a lot of the stuff that doesn’t make it into my blog. That includes links, breaking news, thoughts on current events in the tech world, and occasionally a few off-topic notes about digital living and civilization as we know it.
2. Keeping up with current and former co-workers and other friends and colleagues — mostly people in the IT industry or the media business. I’ve learned more about some of my co-workers from Twitter than I did by working with them in the same office for years.
3. Responding to thoughts and notes from my network of contacts and get to know some of my contacts better in the process.
You can find me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jasonhiner.
Because so many of the early adopters of Twitter are techies, it can be a valuable tool for IT leaders, who can not only follow pundits like me but can also follow like-minded IT experts. In this way, they can build their own custom community of people of interest for IT. That’s the greatest strength of Twitter, and that’s why it will end up being the most important development on the Web in 2008 — the year it really started to gain critical mass.
There’s another reason why IT pros may be interested in Twitter, and it has nothing to do with its use for communication. As an online application built on RubyOnRails, Twitter has run into scaling problems that have recently led to several outages of the service and repeatedly dogged its IT department. In fact, the outages have become so common that they are — dangerously — becoming one of the distinguishing characteristics of Twitter. There’s even a recommendation to put ads on the outage page. Check out the TechCrunch article Twitter At Scale: Will It Work? and this blog post from the Twitter staff to get up to speed on the issues involved.
Further reading
For more on Twitter, take a look at these articles:
* The secret to Twitter (Scobleizer)
* The several habits of wildly successful Twitter users (Slacker Manager)
* Perspective on Twitter and its brethren (CNET)
* In Twitter’s Scoble problem, a business model (GigaOm)
* Twitter, again (ZDNet)
* 8 cool Twitter tools (Wired)
* Five Twitter tools we love (GigaOm)
* Twitter Valued at $80 Million (WebGuild)
* The three business models that make Twitter a billion-dollar business (Calacanis.com)
* End Of Speculation: The Real Twitter Usage Numbers (TechCrunch)
Bottom line for IT leaders
While Twitter launched quietly back in mid-2006, 2008 will likely be remembered as the year that it reached critical mass. In fact, the masses have grown to the point that Twitter’s infrastructure can’t keep up, which has led to almost-weekly service outages and outrage from users. However, whether Twitter itself is the brand or product that survives, the phenomenon of group messaging that it pioneered will undoubtedly continue. It has already hooked too many users, and there are lots more joining every day right now. IT leaders should join the party, too, because they can take advantage of Twitter to become smarter, more timely, and better connected.
UPDATE, May 26, 2008 at 9:10 AM EST:
One other effective use of Twitter is for following your most valuable RSS feeds. It’s not a replacement for a full RSS reader, but it is very useful for keeping track of your most-watched feeds (if they are on Twitter). Once you add them to your list, the new posts simply show up in your Twitter stream. Here are some RSS feeds you can follow on Twitter:
* TechRepublic Blogs
* ZDNet Blogs
* CNET News
For those who have never used Twitter, my biggest challenge here might be giving you a concise definition. Here are some of the common ones that you’ll hear:
* It’s micro-blogging
* It’s a 140-character note about what you’re doing
* It’s an up-to-the-minute status update for all your friends
* It’s a great way to keep up with what your colleagues are working on
* It’s a very timely source for news and links
* It’s like being part of the Borg but you choose your own Collective
Here’s how I explained Twitter to my mom a couple weeks ago:
“It’s like a text message or an instant message — limited to 140 characters — that you send to everyone on your buddy list. You use it when you’re doing something interesting, you have some news to share, or you have a Web link that you want to bring to people’s attention.”
f you don’t think that sounds very exciting or useful, you’re not alone. A lot of the most active Twitterers I know didn’t take to it right away. There’s an interesting phenomenon with Twitter where a user gives it a first try and then sort of abandons it, while still occasionly checking on the messages posted by the people on their contact list. Then, the user eventually starts doing and seeing stuff and thinking, “I should post that Twitter.” Pretty soon they actually start remembering to post that stuff, either from a Web browser or a cell phone, and before long they are hooked.
Five reasons why Twitter matters
1. Twitter provides a method for tapping into the brainwaves of people whose thoughts and opinions are valuable to you.
2. It can help you catch breaking news very quickly. It’s the digital equivalent of word-of-mouth.
3. It can allow you to communicate and network with people that you’ve wanted to meet.
4. Twitter lets you keep track of colleagues, see what they’re working on, and better understand what they do.
5. It can serve as a messaging tool to quickly communicate with multiple contacts.
Twitter for IT
I primarily use Twitter for three things:
1. Posting a lot of the stuff that doesn’t make it into my blog. That includes links, breaking news, thoughts on current events in the tech world, and occasionally a few off-topic notes about digital living and civilization as we know it.
2. Keeping up with current and former co-workers and other friends and colleagues — mostly people in the IT industry or the media business. I’ve learned more about some of my co-workers from Twitter than I did by working with them in the same office for years.
3. Responding to thoughts and notes from my network of contacts and get to know some of my contacts better in the process.
You can find me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jasonhiner.
Because so many of the early adopters of Twitter are techies, it can be a valuable tool for IT leaders, who can not only follow pundits like me but can also follow like-minded IT experts. In this way, they can build their own custom community of people of interest for IT. That’s the greatest strength of Twitter, and that’s why it will end up being the most important development on the Web in 2008 — the year it really started to gain critical mass.
There’s another reason why IT pros may be interested in Twitter, and it has nothing to do with its use for communication. As an online application built on RubyOnRails, Twitter has run into scaling problems that have recently led to several outages of the service and repeatedly dogged its IT department. In fact, the outages have become so common that they are — dangerously — becoming one of the distinguishing characteristics of Twitter. There’s even a recommendation to put ads on the outage page. Check out the TechCrunch article Twitter At Scale: Will It Work? and this blog post from the Twitter staff to get up to speed on the issues involved.
Further reading
For more on Twitter, take a look at these articles:
* The secret to Twitter (Scobleizer)
* The several habits of wildly successful Twitter users (Slacker Manager)
* Perspective on Twitter and its brethren (CNET)
* In Twitter’s Scoble problem, a business model (GigaOm)
* Twitter, again (ZDNet)
* 8 cool Twitter tools (Wired)
* Five Twitter tools we love (GigaOm)
* Twitter Valued at $80 Million (WebGuild)
* The three business models that make Twitter a billion-dollar business (Calacanis.com)
* End Of Speculation: The Real Twitter Usage Numbers (TechCrunch)
Bottom line for IT leaders
While Twitter launched quietly back in mid-2006, 2008 will likely be remembered as the year that it reached critical mass. In fact, the masses have grown to the point that Twitter’s infrastructure can’t keep up, which has led to almost-weekly service outages and outrage from users. However, whether Twitter itself is the brand or product that survives, the phenomenon of group messaging that it pioneered will undoubtedly continue. It has already hooked too many users, and there are lots more joining every day right now. IT leaders should join the party, too, because they can take advantage of Twitter to become smarter, more timely, and better connected.
UPDATE, May 26, 2008 at 9:10 AM EST:
One other effective use of Twitter is for following your most valuable RSS feeds. It’s not a replacement for a full RSS reader, but it is very useful for keeping track of your most-watched feeds (if they are on Twitter). Once you add them to your list, the new posts simply show up in your Twitter stream. Here are some RSS feeds you can follow on Twitter:
* TechRepublic Blogs
* ZDNet Blogs
* CNET News
Friday, July 25, 2008
Is IT no longer about technology?
Author: Jason Hiner
Gartner researcher Tom Austin believes that the future of IT is much more about people than technology. While he makes a compelling and visionary argument, there are aspects of IT that will remain tied to a keyboard and screen.
It’s become horribly cliche to talk about the importance of IT-business alignment and the need for IT professionals to become much more business-savvy, but Gartner’s Tom Austin (right) takes it to the next level. He believes that the IT professional of the future will be less of an engineer and more of a social scientist.
What? Yes, you heard that right — the word “social” will become a key part of the IT professional’s job description. It flies in the face of most of the stereotypes about techies and it sounds a little corny, but Austin does draw some interesting conclusions that are worth a look, if only because they are so unconventional.
Here are some of the most salient quotes from Austin on this subject (from an interview in Fast Company):
* “The problem with IT today is there are too many engineers and not enough social scientists.”
* “Too often, we have measurement and reward systems that are focused on how many transactions did you process, how many orders did you ship, and how many deals did you close — rather than who helped these other people succeed.”
* “There’s a recognition that if you relax some controls — not all — you’re probably going to get more creative behavior out of the individuals than if everything is locked down.”
* “There are still people in IT who’ll have to worry about keeping the systems running, but now we’re going to think more about how to exploit the things we can do with social networking, expertise location, and all of the other higher-level social ordered phenomenon we can facilitate using technology.”
* “It’s not the technology that counts. It’s the people.”
The fact that IT keeps running into these issues about being more business-savvy and people-savvy may simply be a natural part of the evolution of the profession. My TechRepublic colleague Mark Kaelin said that when he was in business school studying accounting, his professors constantly drilled home the fact that too many accountants were just number crunchers and that what the field needed was accountants who were more focused on understanding the business and how they could best serve it. Sound familiar?
In order to evaluate Austin’s arguments, let’s take a look at the three segments that IT is going to be divided into over the next decade:
1.) Operations and infrastructure management
We’re primarily talking about server rooms, data centers, and network operations centers here. IT pros in this realm will manage the backend infrastructure that powers businesses large and small. In the years ahead, this category of IT is going to become highly centralized and highly commoditized. The increase of virtualization and cloud computing will hasten this development.
As a result, managed services companies will grow and take over the data center for many companies. It simply won’t be cost-efficient to have your own data center, in many cases. As such, the administrators and engineers who run these uber-NOCs will be highly trained and highly versatile. They will be the blue collar workers of the IT industry, focused on maintenance and process work.
Although many of these IT pros will need to have strong communications skills because they will deal with multiple customers and multiple accounts on a daily basis, there will also be plenty of IT workers chained to keyboard and monitor and tasked solely for monitoring the infrastructure and keeping it running. Austin’s argument doesn’t hold up very well in this category.
2.) Solutions and project management
Today’s developers and software engineers will morph into this category, which will have a greater focus on delivering end-to-end solutions to businesses, whether in pre-packaged software or custom applications. Just as it happens in many organizations right now, project managers will gather business requirements and build out the plans for solutions that software engineers can deliver.
This is primarily where Austin’s ideas apply. He sees these solutions makers evolving from technology-focused engineers to people-focused scientists and business associates. And, he’s correct that IT needs to build better solutions that are more customer-centric and get the technology out of the way so that users can collaborate and work more effectively.
3.) End user management
From help desk to training to PC provisioning, IT is also responsible for deploying, managing, and supporting the systems that employees use every day. This isn’t going away anytime soon — although some companies have tried to outsource pieces of this — because it almost always involves some form of physical access to the machines. Managed services could take over some of this, but there’s always still a need for at least some physical access.
In the future, the role of this part of the IT department will diminish, although not entirely disappear. Many companies will move toward a self-provisioning model and will support user-owned systems and devices. Plus, the bar for usability and ease-of-use will continue to to be pushed higher and higher.
Nevertheless, even a diminished support department will likely need to change many of its attitudes and policies, as Austin notes, in order to help the company stay competitive. IT will need to relax some of its standards in order to allow more users to easily collaborate and share data and documents.
Bottom line
So, yes, IT is becoming more about people than technology, and IT professionals will need to become more business- and people-savvy. Part of the change is a natural evolution of the profession, and part of it has to do with some of the big technology shifts happening in the back office. Still, there are a lot of IT jobs and roles that won’t be directly affected by these changes, especially in operations and infrastructure. Those jobs will become the blue collar jobs of IT, focused heavily on processes and maintenance, and employed by managed services companies in many cases.
Gartner researcher Tom Austin believes that the future of IT is much more about people than technology. While he makes a compelling and visionary argument, there are aspects of IT that will remain tied to a keyboard and screen.
It’s become horribly cliche to talk about the importance of IT-business alignment and the need for IT professionals to become much more business-savvy, but Gartner’s Tom Austin (right) takes it to the next level. He believes that the IT professional of the future will be less of an engineer and more of a social scientist.
What? Yes, you heard that right — the word “social” will become a key part of the IT professional’s job description. It flies in the face of most of the stereotypes about techies and it sounds a little corny, but Austin does draw some interesting conclusions that are worth a look, if only because they are so unconventional.
Here are some of the most salient quotes from Austin on this subject (from an interview in Fast Company):
* “The problem with IT today is there are too many engineers and not enough social scientists.”
* “Too often, we have measurement and reward systems that are focused on how many transactions did you process, how many orders did you ship, and how many deals did you close — rather than who helped these other people succeed.”
* “There’s a recognition that if you relax some controls — not all — you’re probably going to get more creative behavior out of the individuals than if everything is locked down.”
* “There are still people in IT who’ll have to worry about keeping the systems running, but now we’re going to think more about how to exploit the things we can do with social networking, expertise location, and all of the other higher-level social ordered phenomenon we can facilitate using technology.”
* “It’s not the technology that counts. It’s the people.”
The fact that IT keeps running into these issues about being more business-savvy and people-savvy may simply be a natural part of the evolution of the profession. My TechRepublic colleague Mark Kaelin said that when he was in business school studying accounting, his professors constantly drilled home the fact that too many accountants were just number crunchers and that what the field needed was accountants who were more focused on understanding the business and how they could best serve it. Sound familiar?
In order to evaluate Austin’s arguments, let’s take a look at the three segments that IT is going to be divided into over the next decade:
1.) Operations and infrastructure management
We’re primarily talking about server rooms, data centers, and network operations centers here. IT pros in this realm will manage the backend infrastructure that powers businesses large and small. In the years ahead, this category of IT is going to become highly centralized and highly commoditized. The increase of virtualization and cloud computing will hasten this development.
As a result, managed services companies will grow and take over the data center for many companies. It simply won’t be cost-efficient to have your own data center, in many cases. As such, the administrators and engineers who run these uber-NOCs will be highly trained and highly versatile. They will be the blue collar workers of the IT industry, focused on maintenance and process work.
Although many of these IT pros will need to have strong communications skills because they will deal with multiple customers and multiple accounts on a daily basis, there will also be plenty of IT workers chained to keyboard and monitor and tasked solely for monitoring the infrastructure and keeping it running. Austin’s argument doesn’t hold up very well in this category.
2.) Solutions and project management
Today’s developers and software engineers will morph into this category, which will have a greater focus on delivering end-to-end solutions to businesses, whether in pre-packaged software or custom applications. Just as it happens in many organizations right now, project managers will gather business requirements and build out the plans for solutions that software engineers can deliver.
This is primarily where Austin’s ideas apply. He sees these solutions makers evolving from technology-focused engineers to people-focused scientists and business associates. And, he’s correct that IT needs to build better solutions that are more customer-centric and get the technology out of the way so that users can collaborate and work more effectively.
3.) End user management
From help desk to training to PC provisioning, IT is also responsible for deploying, managing, and supporting the systems that employees use every day. This isn’t going away anytime soon — although some companies have tried to outsource pieces of this — because it almost always involves some form of physical access to the machines. Managed services could take over some of this, but there’s always still a need for at least some physical access.
In the future, the role of this part of the IT department will diminish, although not entirely disappear. Many companies will move toward a self-provisioning model and will support user-owned systems and devices. Plus, the bar for usability and ease-of-use will continue to to be pushed higher and higher.
Nevertheless, even a diminished support department will likely need to change many of its attitudes and policies, as Austin notes, in order to help the company stay competitive. IT will need to relax some of its standards in order to allow more users to easily collaborate and share data and documents.
Bottom line
So, yes, IT is becoming more about people than technology, and IT professionals will need to become more business- and people-savvy. Part of the change is a natural evolution of the profession, and part of it has to do with some of the big technology shifts happening in the back office. Still, there are a lot of IT jobs and roles that won’t be directly affected by these changes, especially in operations and infrastructure. Those jobs will become the blue collar jobs of IT, focused heavily on processes and maintenance, and employed by managed services companies in many cases.
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