Truly, I jest. For those of you who work in the IT department I mean no disrespect. None to you, and none to my man Billy Shakes. Interestingly enough, in my consulting experience with implementing and recommending E2 solutions, our clients consistently present the IT department as huddled in the bunker (obviously with the lawyers), ready to fight this thing with a fervor comparable to a Harry Potter book release. Typically, Jay and I are engaged for services by the business users, not the IT Department. This strikes me as somewhat odd. When you consider the potential scale and impact of these apps within an organization, I find it (refreshingly) strange that the users, not the administrators, are leading the charge. And moreover, the IT department is standing in the way. Why is that? Well…I have a couple thoughts (shocker).

Post Graduate A/V club – Ever since the term usability was invented, the geeks (and I am one) have been fighting the shift of technology to be more accessible and well…usable. Maybe it’s a job security thing. Maybe it’s just an ego thing. I am not sure of “why”, but the whole “I am so cool because I don’t need a GUI” contingent is definitely the “who”. I believe this translates well into the emergence of E2 solutions. Easy to implement, often available as a service, relatively affordable, and wildly popular are attributes that all but eliminate the need for an IT department. “But who will admin the AS400???” Nobody chief. And nobody should have to. Business users need capability, not overhead.

Green is a great color for you – As a possible corollary my previous point, I get the feeling that the IT department is often just pissed they didn’t come up with the idea first. “What? The users implemented a technology? For the whole organization? Inconceivable!”. Again, this translates well into the E2 world. The veritable technology innovation market is made more open to the greater community. Business users now have a chance to choose, implement, and often supplant enterprise applications. I’d be envious too.

Good and Evil – Most IT department are sort of predisposed to have an adversarial relationship with users. Clearly users are lesser humans who, if eliminated, would take with them all of the headaches associated with working in the IT Department. One of my wiki best practices is managing for success. If your go-in position is something that allows freedom (a platform) as opposed to specific functionality (an application), will instantaneously cause “user support issues” of mythic proportion, your days are numbered. If I had a nickel for every time I have heard “We have some users with very special needs here”, I could combine those nickels with my other nickels, and buy a berth for Larry Ellison’s dinghy. E2 is all about bottoms up empowerment. Who would want to empower evil?

Any thoughts?