Thursday, April 19, 2007
IT Departments Wary of Web 2.0
byFor many organizations, the growing Web 2.0 movement sets up an inevitable showdown with the IT department. The biggest benefits of Web 2.0 – employee collaboration, audience participation and management transparency, to name a few – directly conflict with the highly-structured, control-driven IT world.
In many respects, Web 2.0 simplifies the work of IT staff. The increasing number of web-based applications will eventually reduce the number of stand-alone software applications. During a recent forum at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, a panelist noted that IT teams will not miss the days of patching thousands of desktop computers with the latest upgrade or fix.
Despite these benefits, it’s a big hurdle for organizations to loosen their technology grip. This point was further illustrated in a recent McKinsey Global survey of executives (reported by Business Week). The survey findings suggest increased spending in web services that allow back-end systems to communicate. But adoption of social networking and other Web 2.0 tools lags far behind. A generational gap may be a significant factor, and companies remain concerned about liability and information accuracy.
What does this mean for marketers? Perhaps Steve Rubel puts it best:
The marketing environment has changed, without a doubt. However, it has not done so enough to force everyone yet to adapt how they communicate. Over time they will. It just is going to take longer than we would all like.
As the Business Week article notes, the increasing number of “millennials” entering the workforce will hasten the discussion and evolution.
