What happens when users are left to their own devices?
The changing shape of practices
Posted in Management, 14th November 2011 11:11 GMT
Watch Now : Virtual Machine Movement with Hyper-V
Broadcast It's clear that there are fundamental changes happening in the way people, and businesses, want to work. The relentless pace of technology developments has given us ever better and more connected notebooks, and now smartphones and tablets. This means we can work wherever and whenever it suits.
That's all well and good, but just because the devices and technology allow us to work more flexibly doesn't just magically make it effective. Allowing users with technology to develop with a free reign is just as likely to end in chaos and confusion rather than order, productivity and effectiveness.
It's been difficult enough to galvanise people and organise them into teams with them working closely together. Having them far apart brings a whole set of management and psychological issues to the table. Too often companies don't recognise the importance of the human factors and expect the IT department to be able to sort out what is a business problem with IT systems and budgets. What is it that companies need to do to turn the mess into success?
Fortunately, on November 24th at 11:00 GMT we have a live broadcast that aims to piece together useful solutions to this pressing subject. El Reg broadcast editor Tim Phillips asks Tim Stone from Cisco and Andrew Buss from Freeform Dynamics to show us their blueprints.
We would love you to share your experiences in this area via our on-going live Q&A window. Together we are sure to come up with a practical evaluation on how to achieve the flexibility that’s needed in your business’ IT department.
Sound interesting? Good, you can join us for this free event right here.
Watch Now : Virtual Machine Movement with Hyper-V
COMMENTS
Is that a rhetorical question?
"What happens when users are left to their own devices?" Hmm, let me see.
Virus / malware infections.
Lost data, and no backups.
Open wireless connections.
Users with 30 search toolbars
Everyone logging on with the same username (and password = 'Password1')
Printing all in Hig Def colour (using branded ink jet) so that the spreadsheet looks 'nice'
Marketing decide what software you should use, based upon how funky the presentations are.
Separate folders on the server (for pr0n), everyone else uses the same folder for everything
300Gb mailbox folders (290 Gb of picture attachments of Girls night out, holiday snaps, grandchildren, cars, latest DIY projects)
Different versions of files in different locations
Or am I just being cynical?
Yep - pretty much sums it up. In my past I've run into many so called "Technical" Directors (in IT industries) who manage to knacker their systems in almost exactly that way within days of getting a fresh, clean, working and fast system. It's usually the management and executives that are the worst at it.
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