"What we are witnessing in consumerization is an inevitable outcome of the convergence of technical and social forces that have blurred the line between work and personal lives and identities. The writing has been on the wall (or in this case, the tablet) for some time now."

Opening Statement

THE LINE HAS BLURRED

In this issue of Cutter IT Journal, we present a number of authors with differing approaches to and perspectives on what some have termed the "consumerization of IT." Whatever we call it -- BYOD (bring your own device), mobility, consumerization -- it's not new. Nor is it solely about devices. What we are witnessing is an inevitable outcome of the convergence of technical and social forces that have blurred the line between work and personal lives and identities. The writing has been on the wall (or in this case, the tablet) for some time now.

Those who might still be trying to resist or dismiss consumerization should be aware that this is not about logic. It's driven by deeper forces -- our addiction to instant information, convenience, and constant connectedness. To defy those trends is to be seen as out of touch with current reality. As one author points out, we are not going to return to the "old days" where employees had "one [device] for company business and one for personal use." Another observes that "a disconnected PC in the 1990s was an inconvenience; a disconnected PC in the 2010s is almost a brick." I found myself nodding in agreement as I read this. My only reservation is that I would remove the word "almost."

As BlackBerry manufacturer Research in Motion (RIM) has discovered, standing on the sidelines and critiquing these devices as "not ready for the enterprise" is a losing strategy. The plunge in RIM's stock price is all the evidence we need that the crossover of consumer devices to corporate use is a done deal. The floodgates are open. The genie is not going back in the bottle. Given that fact, it's timely for this edition of CITJ to look at consumerization and begin to explore its current and future impact on corporate IT.

UPGRADE ME

Our lead article by Beth Cohen, "The Effects of Consumer-Driven Innovation on Enterprise IT," raises a key question. Given the inevitability of consumerization, why are companies seemingly so ill prepared? As she points out, "companies [are] seeing widespread use of tablets but little control over how they [are] used. Only 30% of the CIOs surveyed reported having any kind of BYOD governance policy at all."

Cohen argues that BYOD is merely one in a series of disruptive trends that have changed the nature of IT. To the degree that IT organizations resist this, or any other disruptive change, we deprive ourselves of opportunities to innovate.

Disruptive consumerization may be, but not all of its impacts are negative. While it's not uncommon for a company to try to stretch the life span of its computing devices, few consumers can resist the lure of upgrading, even at their own expense (as the blocks-long lines for the iPad and iPhone show all too well). Perhaps now we can transfer the "evergreening" of our device portfolios from the corporation to the employee. Furthermore, consumerization could be the remedy that reverses the "de-skilling of IT," as the management of networks and application exploration (if not development) breathe some fresh air into IT departments that have been devastated by outsourcing and other trends.

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE ...

Dan Gordon gives us a way to see BYOD in perspective in his intriguing piece "What the PC Revolution Can Teach Us About the 'Consumerization of IT.'" Gordon explores a familiar "back to the future" theme and uses it as a framework to explore and understand the issues.

Time after time, even disruptive technological innovations follow a very predictable trajectory. History repeats itself. Circumstances differ, but overall trends are similar, and the basic patterns of technological adoption remain consistent.

Considering technological introduction as archetypal pattern, Gordon presents BYOD as an inevitable phenomenon driven by transformation in processors and storage systems. He makes the point that this latter-day "revolution" is merely the inevitable march of Moore's Law as the next generation of hyperportable devices replaces the merely portable devices of the previous generation.

Exploring the parallels between the PC revolution and the BYOD phenomenon, Gordon makes a couple of predictions that are bound to be controversial. First is his dismissal of those who feel that because the Android is outselling iPhone, this means that another piece of history is repeating itself -- as when the early entry (the Apple) lost its dominance to an upstart challenger (the PC). "The game," he writes, "goes to the side with the best apps." But according to Gordon, even that situation is temporary. His other prediction is the eventual demise of the "app" itself. In his view, there is an inevitable pattern that moves processing and storage back to the idea of a central processor. In a world where "the server side [is] 100% available with zero latency," the client becomes irrelevant and the truly critical functions move back to the server.

IF YOU CAN'T BEAT 'EM, JOIN 'EM

Next, Munish Gupta argues that the trend we call "consumerization" goes well beyond BYOD. It reflects the growing impatience of the end user and some real challenges to the idea of enterprise applications and perhaps even IT itself.

Gupta points out the "disenchantment with enterprise applications" and the increasing lure of consumer apps. Where Gordon suggests that the ergonomics of new devices may limit their usage, at least in the short run, Gupta proposes that the constraints of screen and keyboard size have challenged device developers to focus on user experience and usability in a way that enterprise applications simply have not been able to match.

But there is a dark side to this. Gupta gives the example of an employee who uses a smartphone to bypass a restriction on file size in an email. While this act of rebellion may be benign, it also breaches controls and allows a new point of access for file types that are associated with the spread of viruses and Trojans. To those trying to defend our networks against a slew of new and clever malware, it's a tough pill to swallow. Recent news of Android apps that contained keystroke-logging malware merely add to the nervousness.

According to Gupta, the solution is not control -- rather, we need to compete with consumer applications. In analyzing why this new breed of applications is so compelling, he discusses the concept of a hierarchy of user needs. While it may be far-fetched to say that your employees would be happier on your ERP system than playing Angry Birds, Gupta does outline how to make enterprise applications more appealing, more usable, and more compelling by meeting not just the functional criteria, but the higher-level needs of the end user.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

James Cooper and Charles Bess reinforce a theme raised by all the authors in this issue in their article "BYOD Is Not Really About Devices." Despite the growth curves, despite the sheer numbers, IT departments are missing the boat if they focus on managing devices. Instead, Cooper and Bess assert that the real focus should shift to managing information and "personas."

Having been an IT manager and CIO myself, the idea that managing devices is "the wrong boat" seemed -- to put it nicely -- counterintuitive. But as I explored Cooper and Bess's ideas, I became more intrigued. Focusing on what data is accessed (information) and by whom (personas) raises some real issues that are not so apparent when your overriding concern is managing a proliferation of devices. There are some pressing concerns in the areas of processing power, network design, and storage. The new generation of devices requires near-zero latency, representing a significant network challenge -- particularly if, at the same time, Cooper and Bess are right about the demands on processing and storage.

Even if our technical architectures are up to the challenges of this new world, our data and application architectures will also be challenged and may need to be questioned if not redesigned. In a world where the choice between Type 1 hypervisor and Type 2 hypervisor can have real impacts on security and performance, the concept of virtualization, which many of us take for granted, may require a deeper level of scrutiny and understanding even at the executive level. Likewise, Cooper and Bess urge us to look at the idea of desktop virtualization as a critical component of a BYOD architecture. Once again, this may be required both to cope with the heterogeneity of devices and to help manage the performance, deployment, and security issues inherent in a BYOD world.

True to their title, the authors point out that the heterogeneity of devices is not our only concern. Crowdsourcing, for instance, exposes our networks and data to many, many more people. Moreover, the number of people is not the sole delimiter. Each of us actually has multiple identities. In a world where our application, network, and security architectures are built on the idea of one-to-one trusted relationships, these new challenges might force us to rethink our approach. In a BYOD world, the authors say, we have to consider not just the person, but the persona.

ALL HAIL "IT-IZATION"

In our final article, "Consumerization of IT, Social Computing, and Mobility as the New Desktop," Chaka Chaka adds an interesting twist. Are we consumerizing IT, as we've all been saying, or are we IT-izing consumer devices? In the move to social computing, have employees really made corporate IT bend to their will, or have they been maneuvered into using their own devices as platforms for deploying enterprise IT services?

Given the power and complexity of what passes for a consumer device, it's not an unthinkable question. My current phone has, believe it or not, more memory, storage, and processing power than the first system I worked on, which supported a nationwide company with branches in 10 major cities and a steady flow of transactional processing.

From Chaka's viewpoint, rather than viewing consumerization as the challenge, we might want to think of the opportunity to IT-ize our workforce and fully mobilize corporate IT. From the perspective of those of us who find ourselves answering corporate email on an anywhere/anytime basis, it's not just semantics. This week it took every bit of my own self-control to relax given the fact that I had just received and read a disturbing email about a troubled project -- as I waited for the midnight showing of a new blockbuster film.

Chaka gives us examples of two large corporations that have embraced this concept of IT-ization and conscripted consumer devices as part of their corporate IT deployment. He explores the discipline that is required and gives us a thorough examination of how one key aspect -- security -- can be addressed in such a way as to protect the enterprise and still exploit the potential that consumerization offers.

FULL STEAM AHEAD

At Cutter, we are always challenged to not only raise questions and explore uncertainty, but also to try to show the way forward -- to the degree that it is possible in this industry. That is why I chose to end this edition with Chaka's article, which leaves us with the real essence of the BYOD debate. He challenges us to not simply regard consumerization as a new challenge; he urges us to embrace it and co-opt it as a force for positive change. Whatever we call this trend -- BYOD, consumerization, or IT-ization (if you adopt Chaka's term) -- there is only one certain direction: forward. There is no turning back the clock. Especially when the clock is on your smartphone.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR