Another impact of the way in which the delivery of information systems is changing is in the way in which IT departments can control the use of technology within organisations.
The traditional model was that IT departments provided white lists of approved applications. If the IT department said you could use it, then you could. If they said you couldn't, you couldn't unless you could convince them otherwise. This was usually implemented using lock down of operating systems, and systems management platforms.
This slow moving, gatekeeper approach was one of the major drives behind the “No IT Department” marketing that SaaS vendors love so much… IT departments viewed as inhibitors to the business, not as facilitators. No wonder so many of them got sold off…
In a world where an “application” is something that can be delivered in a browser, the white list model is broken. A technical distinction exists between applications that the IT Department say you can have and they have control over (those that need to be installed into the OS), and those that they have no say over that don't require an install.
I've come to the conclusion that the only path IT departments can take is to move to an unfortunately reactive black list model… you can do whatever you want unless we have explicitly told you you can't. It's not the most positive of messages, but it's the only way I can see that I can offer a level of IT governance in a world where I cannot afford to become a bottleneck. It also requires a high level of IT literacy in the organisation.
On the black list of note for me at the moment are Spotify (my favourite app in the world, but a killer on a corporate network), and demo new versions of software used on client work (because it will create file formats that we then have to buy the full version to access in the future). Adobe, bless them, are particularly good at making our lives an upgrade nightmare using the latter stealth marketing techniques.
mmitII 