This morning I watched an on-demand webinar from Gartner analyst Jarod Greene called What Foursquare, Facebook and Final Fantasy Can Teach I&O Organizations.
One slide and concept, in particular, resonated with me — the idea that as employees we are each treated as two separate users of IT, two entities that need to be combined for corporate IT success.
The rise of the "business consumer"
Jarod described the "Business Carlos" entity as living in email, avoiding corporate social networks, and ignoring IT communications amongst other things. Versus "Consumer Carlos" who hates email, loves Facebook, and embraces self and peer support. With a need for IT to now consider "Business Consumer Carlos" over Business Carlos.
It makes sense. But more importantly for me, it took me back to 1990 and my personal corporate IT evolution.
1990
My first real job and Nelson Mandela was released. IT-wise, we had a couple of communal desktops for a dozen team members who spent 40% of their time at other locations. DOS commands were useful to know and pen and paper was king. Cut and paste was literally that when it came to creating reports from other team member content. The team secretary would then type up the formal version.
1992
By 1992 we had a couple of communal laptops to travel with but pen and paper was still king. Interestingly I bought my own personal mobile phone, due to the travel commitment, before the team were given a communal mobile. So who thinks BYOD is a relatively new concept and challenge?
I seem to remember emails replacing physical letters somewhere around this time too and pretty soon we had our own personal desktops — still not ideal for us mobile workers though. The communal laptops were great for people who wanted to do personal computing work, such as correspondence courses, at home. And floppy disks, to move between machines, were invaluable.
1996
At the start of 1996 I changed department and with it the differences in decentralized IT provisioning policies became apparent. I now had a laptop and a corporate mobile phone — even though I travelled a lot, lot less. But who was I to complain? I could now work from anywhere but I still went into the office nigh on every day.
And the individually-assigned laptop, while a corporate asset, was my start for home computing.
 
1999
While the IT world was worrying about the impending chaos of Y2K I moved into my first quasi-IT role. Oddly I still didn't have a personal PC at home — well not until a new work friend built me one. It was a new department and again therefore new IT provisioning rules.
Not only did I now have what would now be called a sub-notebook, the smallest laptop I have ever had, I also had access to the internet and an email account with which I could communicate outside of the organization. Oh and I still had the old email account to communicate internally.
In 2001 we implemented a knowledge management system of all things. And yes it was built on Lotus Notes. In early 2002 it was agreed that I could work from home. Cue Facilities buying me office equipment and IT providing me with, or paying for, everything I needed to work at home.
2002
Another departmental change and new IT provisioning policies. The centralized IT organization had replaced its decentralized business unit predecessors. And IT was provided based on job-role need. There was so much more consistency and I'd like to think fairness of provision.
But most people still didn't have access to the internet. Nor did they have mobile phones in the main. In particular internet access and Blackberry devices were provided based on individual and team business cases respectively to legitimize need.
But many people had dial-up internet access at home and it was the start of employees, who could justify a corporate mobile phone, taking the SIM out of their "corporate brick" to put it in something far sexier from the high street. Many couldn't understand why their corporate SIM wouldn't work in the personal Blackberry they had just bought. Thus it was a case of forwarding their corporate email to their personal Blackberry.
It was the start of the "decline" of corporate IT. That is the decline in the eyes of the end user. Corporate IT organizations offered more, delivered more, and achieved more; but it was against a backdrop of growing end user expectations.
2005
It was now a high tech world. I had a PC and a laptop at home. Nearly everyone I knew had personal mobile phones. I was even "paying through the nose" for a precursor to broadband and then the much cheaper broadband.
I also now had an IT product management role which meant I could order myself a tiny laptop unlike what we gave to mere mortals (unless justified on health grounds). And I went through a quick succession of Nokia, Blackberry, Qtek, HP, and HTC mobile devices — technology was cool. And amazingly these things could access the internet. But then so could my personal phone.
However, most end users still had IT and telephony equipment similar to what they and I had in 2002. There was universal internet access though. But it was a CEO, not a CIO, decision to give this!
IT was still stuck in a command and control mindset but, to be fair to us, we were delivering far more IT goodness without budgetary enhancement.
 
2006
Working in IT was great for those who knew the right people — a tiny laptop, a smart phone with email access, and a laptop data card and BT Openzone for when I was on the move.
We also started to hand out Blackberry devices to senior people — the leap of faith was that they had to cost-in in terms of productivity. Plus those at the top who had them wanted them for their people, who then wanted them for their people, and so on. But it was nice to circumvent the business case process.
However, in many ways IT was still behind the curve; but we did have a BYOD trial. Yes, in 2006!
I was given, well reimbursed, £1000 to buy my own laptop. So were some other "special" IT people plus a number of real employees — Sales people. Everyone loved it but they didn't love having to support themselves. I left the organization before the BYOD trial was deemed not as successful as hoped. Plus I couldn't buy my BYOD device back which had taken me a day to set up to my liking.
So in 2006 IT was probably no longer king of its own domain. Real employees were starting to get better IT and telephony at home than they had at work. Even discounting my special workplace IT kit, my home broadband was far quicker than when I worked in the office.
Fast-forward to the present discontent with corporate IT
So much has changed for Consumer Carlos in the last ten years let alone in the last 20, although Carlos didn't look as old as me. But to use a tweet to quote a Gartner stat Jarod displayed during the webcast, IT is struggling with Consumer, or even Business Consumer, Carlos:
And it isn't that corporate IT has declined; it has definitely got so much better. It's just that it hasn't moved forward quickly enough to keep pace with consumer IT and the associated expectations.
For me this is the real "consumerization of IT" issue that we continue to hear so much about — when does the IT organization stop acting like Blockbuster to become more Netflix-like? When does it react to the changing demands and consumption patterns of Carlos and his colleagues? And how does it justify the potential expense? All hopefully before it is too late.
