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09.24.07
Is IT Holding You Back From Web 2.0?
 By
Dan Morrill
One of the ideas in web 2.0 is collaboration, unfortunately, people are finding out that the IT Department that has a long history of non-collaboration, and might be holding back a companies adoption of Web 2.0 technologies within a company.
When Adam Carson, an associate at Morgan Stanley, first began pushing the use of Web 2.0 tools, he faced a major obstacle - the investment bank's 10,000-member IT department. "Most of our IT department didn't get it," he said at the conference. "This was all new to them. They had just been stuck in the world of enterprise IT." Source: Computer World
While IT Departments have their own problems in general, it is not just resistance in the IT department as a cultural artifact. Most staff spends a good proportion of their time working e-mail, on the phone, and dealing with problem break fix. Training budgets are usually slim if existent for further training.
They might just not have the time to "get it".
They might just need to go to training to get the skills they will need to implement, deploy, and use web 2.0 technologies.
They may have to overcome IT's stereotype of distance from the company.
The other problem is when business needs to do something, and the IT Department kills the project because they either do not have the time to work on it, or do not have the technical skills to deal with the new project.
Business needs drive the company, some projects end up being worked on that bypass the internal IT department, or become a special project with their own IT Support staff that have the skills, knowledge and time to focus on just the one project instead of the multiple projects that the regular IT Staff is dealing with.
Once business and IT become separated though, it is difficult later on to integrate the groups, which in its own way is self-defeating to the internal IT group. The company also ends up with multiple IT groups rather than a unified IT department, which in the longer run of running the business costs more.
Businesses need to address the real issues between Web 2.0 technologies and their obvious benefits to the business. IT Departments need to figure out a way that they can assist business achieve their goals.
Going around the IT department is not optimal, but building a core group between the IT department and the business department to test, try, and see how new technologies work, ones that the business group is looking at would be a good solution, rather than the go around the IT department piece in the Computer World article. If a business unit has to go around the IT department to get a Web 2.0 project off the ground, then the company has failed in innovation, adoption, and management processes.
Comments
About the Author:
Dan Morrill has been in the information security field for 18 years, both civilian and military, and is currently working on his Doctor of Management. Dan shares his insights on the important security issues of today through his blog, Managing Intellectual Property & IT Security, and is an active participant in the ITtoolbox blogging community.
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