Nick Wingfield of the Wall Street Journal on the gap between the technology we use at home vs. the office:
Some forward-thinking companies are already giving employees more freedom to pick mobile phones, computers and applications for work—in some cases, they’re even giving workers allowances to spend on outfitting themselves. The result, they’ve found, is more-productive employees. There’s a reason professional chefs bring their own knives to work, rather than using a dull set of blades lying around the kitchen.
The article paints consumer technology as innovative and exciting to the average employee, but untested by IT, whereas the technology already in use by large corporations may be outdated, but is more thoroughly understood by those supporting it.
It’s a good article, but the best part is what’s happening in the discussions. The two sides in this debate are both making good points, but commenter Thomas Whaples nails it:
The diatribe is dia-tribal, it’s true, but it hilights the underlying frustration that users have with the train wreck of “technology” which runs their current IT infrastructure. I blame society. And Microsoft. (Mostly the latter.) The point which he raises is that something is rotten in the state of IT infrastructure, and it’s holding back business. Layering on the excuses like “things aren’t simple, I [the IT department] have all sorts of budget pressures and political pressures and hydrostatic pressures” is really another sign of the rot. IT managers need to be able to communicate their users’ trouble back to rest of management, rather than just making excuses for why their setup is poorly meeting the company’s needs.
