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Office Workers Move to Override IT Specialists

Posted on: Thursday, 6 March 2008, 14:15 CST

Many office workers are beginning to become their own IT administrators through a process known as “consumerization.”

Rather than waiting for an IT specialist to identify the right tools for their specific problem, many workers are finding the help they need on their own.

Some are referring to the phenomena as "Technology Populism" or “Office 2.0." Consulting firm Yankee Group, sees the movement as a threat for IT managers.

"Individual people, not IT organizations, are driving the next wave of (technology) adoption," Forrester Research said in a recent report.

Analyst Rebecca Wettemann of software research firm Nucleus Research said her company’s surveys often produce the same result of office workers questioning why they have to go through IT to find the help they need in a timely manner.

"IT managers have served as corporate gatekeepers. With software on demand, average people are able to explore and access and do much more than they have in the past," Wettemann says . "That power is going away," she said.

With the next version of Microsoft Office software projected to undergo testing in 2009, this movement has potential consequences for Microsoft, who has gained their riches off of organizations and technical decision makers.

"Established software companies like Microsoft have less ability to promise a product in the future and have customers wait for it," Wettemann says. "When something I can find on the Web does 70 percent of what I want, today, why should I wait?"

Google Inc, Microsoft’s chief rival, made the decision to take an alternate route toward meeting the direct needs of their consumers.

While Microsoft has claimed that their hopes of gaining control of Yahoo is an effort to create a formidable rival to Google, this phenomena adds another benefit to Microsoft’s attempt. If Microsoft can succeed in their takeover effort they would stand to prosper through its use of open standards technology.

 “The Web is at the center of everything Microsoft is doing. The investments we’re making will enable developers and designers to deliver a range of seamless, connected experiences across the continuum of Web applications, rich clients, mobile and other devices.” Ray Ozzie, chief software architect, said while speaking before a group of Web developers at Microsoft’s MIX08 conference in Las Vegas.

"All applications, ours and yours, will incorporate the group-forming aspects of the Web," Ozzie said. "Linking, sharing, ranking, tagging on the Web will become as familiar to us as file, edit and view on the PC.”

In a recent interview about a new Web site publishing tool for teams of business users, Dave Girouard, the general manager of Google's Enterprise division, said Google's strategy was to get IT technicians out of the way whenever feasible.

"The idea of this product is that IT (technicians) don't have to do anything except enable the users to serve themselves," he said.

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On the Net:

Yankee Group

Forrester Research

Nucleus Research

Source: redOrbit Staff and Wire Reports

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