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I think 37signals is half-right, but the other part of the dynamic is that enterprise software is "hidden," while consumer/web software is public. Things suffe

I think 37signals is half-right, but the other part of the dynamic is that enterprise software is "hidden," while consumer/web software is public. Things suffer in the dark longer than they suffer in the light. HP/IBM/BMC web interfaces for (intranet) products sold _this year_ would be laughed off the public web in five seconds (really bad frames, client-side Java applets, etc). (Not to mention the poor organizations buying this stuff tend to have it for about 5 years post-purchase.) That said, the dynamic is changing. Enterprise software/IT is getting consumerized. Sometimes unofficially (everybody uses their ipad at work, but gets/expects no help), sometimes officially (Google Apps has been adopted by some big organizations. Its enterprise product is slightly different from the consumer Google apps, but it's really dang close.) Big business aside, I believe about 10 million students use Google Apps as their official collab/email tool (not counting people's personal accounts. And Google adds a few big schools every month.). These students simply won't arrive at their jobs post-graduation willing to use Lotus Notes + .doc attachments. Younger workers aren't the only thing leading to the consumerization of IT, there's a lot of influence coming from the Internet, and consumer hardware. I don't want to hijack the thread, feel free to crawl my profile to find other places where I write about this stuff. Consumerization of old-school IT is my new pet area of research.

yardie 16y ago
Big business aside, I believe about 10 million students use Google Apps as their official collab/email tool (not counting people's personal accounts. And Google adds a few big schools every month.). These students simply won't arrive at their jobs post-graduation willing to use Lotus Notes + .doc attachments. Haha, want to bet. They'll use whatever is expected because for some places Gmail isn't an option. Maybe in 10 years when some of these students have titles like SVP they can migrate to other platforms.
- thesethings 16y ago
  Heh. I should have been more clear. I've "onboarded" (enterprisey word for orienting/registering/supporting/creating accounts for new hires) many new employees disoriented/frustrated by their new org's tools. What often happens when a new hire really disagrees with his/her new tool for task is that they only use it for the "last mile" of the transaction. So... say they have to turn in an expense report in Excel template. But they like some other app. They will take all their notes in $preferred_app, do all their editing in $preferred_app, and at the last step, export to Excel template. You should see the machinations I've seen around mail. Convoluted downloading and parsing from Exchange servers with shell scripts... hah. In any case... this is not ideal. What this does is make users absorb complexity for IT. IT can get comfortable wtih a platform, too leery to try something else. But users, often years into new generations of workflows (not just young people, so many older employees have been using Gmail for years in their personal life for example.), absorb the blow.

yardie 16y ago

Big business aside, I believe about 10 million students use Google Apps as their official collab/email tool (not counting people's personal accounts. And Google adds a few big schools every month.). These students simply won't arrive at their jobs post-graduation willing to use Lotus Notes + .doc attachments. Haha, want to bet. They'll use whatever is expected because for some places Gmail isn't an option. Maybe in 10 years when some of these students have titles like SVP they can migrate to other platforms.

thesethings 16y ago
Heh. I should have been more clear. I've "onboarded" (enterprisey word for orienting/registering/supporting/creating accounts for new hires) many new employees disoriented/frustrated by their new org's tools. What often happens when a new hire really disagrees with his/her new tool for task is that they only use it for the "last mile" of the transaction. So... say they have to turn in an expense report in Excel template. But they like some other app. They will take all their notes in $preferred_app, do all their editing in $preferred_app, and at the last step, export to Excel template. You should see the machinations I've seen around mail. Convoluted downloading and parsing from Exchange servers with shell scripts... hah. In any case... this is not ideal. What this does is make users absorb complexity for IT. IT can get comfortable wtih a platform, too leery to try something else. But users, often years into new generations of workflows (not just young people, so many older employees have been using Gmail for years in their personal life for example.), absorb the blow.