One of the
interesting phenomena of our social times is that much of the
collaborative technology we have adopted at work has appeared without support or sponsorship from our IT departments. CIOs refer, with increasing
anxiousness, to the challenge of 'Shadow
IT' - IT funded and delivered elsewhere. As their budgets tighten, they look with deep furrowed brows at the new
'engagement platform' that the Communications Team has just rolled-out with
considerably more fanfare than a Sharepoint deployment ever got!
And they have good
reason to be grumpy. Despite the apparent ease of dropping a web-based tool
into the enterprise, it's rarely achieved without some degree of heartache in IT. Machinations about synchronising profiles
with those in the employee directory, bandwidth limitations on the campus wifi
infrastructure, firewall settings, data management policies - Communications
never thought about that, did they?
The solution? CIOs need to get social out from the shadows, illuminating it as a fully-considered
part of our digital environment. CIOs need to think social from the outset and push-back into
those dark corners of the enterprise. Arm-folded grumpiness is not the solution - an enlightened
embrace is.
photo: M Glasgow
