IT heresy: Invite those unsanctioned applications in!
Your end-users try to download unauthorized software all the time, and IT often battles them. Maybe it's its time to rethink that approach, and perhaps fighting unauthorized lifestyle software -- IM, iTunes, Flash, Firefox, and others -- is not the best tack for IT to take, after all.
In the words of Erich Umar, vice president of service delivery management at the American Stock Exchange: "As an IT manager, you don't want to paralyze your users," but "there's a huge benefit for IT managers to be able to handle those applications."
And there a few, albeit a very few, organizations that take the bold step out in front of end-users by embracing such applications if only because doing so puts IT in a better position to manage them.
Forrester Research principal analyst Matt Brown explains that, "IT should be put in a position to educate the organization about what's new and what's available to users."
Read IT heresy: Invite those unsanctioned applications in!
