{"id":1585,"date":"2012-05-15T20:25:41","date_gmt":"2012-05-15T20:25:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cloudnewsdaily.com\/?p=10225"},"modified":"2012-05-15T20:25:41","modified_gmt":"2012-05-15T20:25:41","slug":"the-consumerization-of-it-no-longer-just-about-phones-or-tablets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/the-consumerization-of-it-no-longer-just-about-phones-or-tablets\/","title":{"rendered":"The Consumerization of IT: No Longer Just About Phones or Tablets"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n
\n\t\"Pete<\/p>\n

Pete Khanna is the CEO of TrackVia, a cloud-based application platform that allows business users to build and deploy their own enterprise-grade SaaS applications.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Guest Post by Pete Khanna, CEO, Trackvia<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

What CIOs Need to Know \u2013 And Consider Doing \u2013 About the Emergence of Build-it-Yourself Enterprise Applications<\/em><\/p>\n

It used to be that when a department or even a single employee wanted a new business application, they submitted an IT ticket and patiently waited for an answer. IT would evaluate the request, and decide whether to buy something, build something or simply do nothing. Often, this process took weeks, months and sometimes even years.<\/p>\n

Emboldened by the \u201cConsumerization of IT\u201d trend and empowered by new cloud-based build-it-yourself application platforms, more front-line workers are bypassing IT all together, using their corporate credit cards to buy, build and deploy their own enterprise-grade SaaS applications within hours or days.<\/p>\n

Experts agree this trend is likely to continue \u2013 and even accelerate. Analyst research firm Gartner predicts that \u201ccitizen developers\u201d will build 25 percent of all new business applications by 2014.<\/p>\n

Early case studies showed employees were building and deploying highly specialized or one-of-a-kind \u2018rogue\u2019 applications. These were the type of applications where an off-the-shelf software or SaaS solution either didn\u2019t do the job or simply didn\u2019t exist. However, more and more often, workers are using these build-it-yourself applications to deploy highly customized versions of common department applications, ranging from CRM SaaS solutions and inventory applications to HR systems and even customer service software.<\/p>\n

The benefit of building your own department solution is that it\u2019s often as much as 80 percent more affordable than off-the-shelf software or SaaS solutions. More importantly, these build-it-yourself solutions can be designed, customized and tailored by the users to meet the exact needs and requirements of the business. So instead of departments changing their processes or workflow to match that of the solution, users can change the solution to match their own processes. Simply put, features can be added, removed, changed or tweaked with a few clicks of the mouse. This leads to both greater efficiency and satisfaction by users.<\/p>\n

All of this poses a growing challenge to IT professionals. Namely, how does IT manage the implementation of these so-called rogue applications without impeding employee productivity? The biggest concern from IT professionals is that they don\u2019t want to be in constant clean-up mode, fixing or supporting solutions that end-users built themselves. A close second is that they want to be assured that the application is secure, ensuring that sensitive company information isn\u2019t being compromised.<\/p>\n

Having worked with thousands of businesses \u2013 from small cash-strapped start-ups to Fortune 100 companies \u2013 to implement their own custom applications, we\u2019ve complied this list of best practices.<\/p>\n

Step 1: Surrender to Win<\/strong><\/p>\n

The first and perhaps most important (and difficult) thing to do is decide whether or not to fight or embrace the \u201cConsumerization of IT\u201d movement. Even in highly regulated industries like banking and healthcare, where they use airtight firewalls, employees are finding ways around the lockdown mode of their internal IT organization. Doctors are bringing iPads into the examination room with their own apps installed. Marketers within banking organizations are using social media tools to distribute information. USB ports can be used to transfer information from unsecured laptops to company computers. The simple question becomes whether or not you want to use your limited IT resources and time policing employees or educating and empowering them. Getting alignment on this critical question at the highest levels of the organization is key.<\/p>\n

Step 2: Offer Something Secure, Scalable and Supportable<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rather than hope you\u2019re employees find and pick a secure and reliable build-it-yourself solution, many companies get out in front of their users and identify a single platform that meets both IT\u2019s requirements and end-users\u2019 needs.<\/p>\n

This is where cloud-based application platforms are showing the most favorable response from business users and IT managers alike. Most organizations have larger, more complex enterprise-level applications that on some level need some customization. By adopting and implementing a secure, cloud-based application platform, CIOs proactively meet their own requirements while still providing end-users with a solution they can use to meet their own unique individual or department-level needs.<\/p>\n

Implementing a single platform solution also helps streamline ongoing management and support, while making it faster and easier for employees to learn. For example, if all in-house applications are built atop a single platform, employees don\u2019t have to learn to use multiple solutions. It also means IT doesn\u2019t have to support multiple solutions. Everyone wins.<\/p>\n

Step 3: Consider the Reliability<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nothing gets CEOs cackling faster than an email about a server or a critical system going down and employees checking out for the rest of the day. It\u2019s also no fun for CIOs or IT Directors who have to deal with the hundreds of emails from employees asking, \u201cIs the server back up? When will the CRM system be back up? What\u2019s going on?\u201d<\/p>\n

A recent Constellation Research study shows most SaaS vendors report internal reliability ranging from 97 percent to 99.1 percent. However, it\u2019s not uncommon to expect or demand that your cloud vendor partner demonstrate four-nine reliability. Most vendors will bake this guarantee into a standard SLA agreement. And as always, check the vendor\u2019s track record and ask for customer references.<\/p>\n

The Road Ahead<\/strong><\/p>\n

Like water, businesses and workers will always find the path of least resistance when it comes to working faster, more efficiently or effectively. The role of IT has always been to help clear technical obstacles for users, and protect them along the way. That hasn\u2019t changed.<\/p>\n

What has changed, however, is that IT has the opportunity to get out in front of the cloud computing and the \u201cConsumerization of IT\u201d trends, while playing a more proactive and strategic role in the overall organization\u2019s future, versus trying to play catch up and doing damage control.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s something I think we\u2019d all agree is a good thing.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/div>\n

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Guest Post by Pete Khanna, CEO, Trackvia What CIOs Need to Know \u2013 And Consider Doing \u2013 About the Emergence of Build-it-Yourself Enterprise Applications It used to be that when a department or even a single employee wanted a new business application, they submitted an IT ticket and patiently waited for an answer. IT would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[349,350,351,78,260,49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-application-tools","category-constellation-research","category-consumerization","category-guest-post","category-ipad","category-tools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1585\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}