Impatience Drives IT Change

Nobody likes waiting in line. This is the fundamental reason enterprise computing has changed so dramatically over the past generation. Nobody enjoyed waiting for what was then called MIS to deliver their batched reports on MIS’s schedule and terms. The PC changed all that, even as IT departments continue to wage an eternal battle for control. The current BYOD struggle serves as a reminder of how the bad old days of struggle between technology users who want what they want now and technology managers who want to provide things on their terms. In today’s environment, cloud computing services have snuck into organizations through departmental budgets and personal credit cards the same way PCs did 30 years ago. Rogue clouds are one of the most volatile topics in all of enterprise IT today. Because nobody likes waiting in line.

But there’s an even more important issue in the IT world. Although user impatience has been the principal driver of fundamental enterprise IT change, this other issue is driving fundamental societal change. It has to do with the IoT, but has roots going back almost two decades. I’ll write about this tomorrow…

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