As mentioned previously, your internal business partners are quickly becoming technologists. Your business partners bring consumer grade technology into your ecosystem faster than your teams can assess, harden and support such technology. As your business partners bring in new technology, they point out:

* the technology that they want to use is cheaper/ better/ faster than in-house technology.

* everyone else in their business or industry is doing the same, including your competitors.

So what do I do?

1) Say “no” to everything. Or,

2) Say “yes” to everything.

It should be intuitively obvious that adopting either of the above extreme positions is a losing proposition.

The real answer lies somewhere in between, and the exact balance depends on your circumstances (E.g., company culture and its  risk appetite; the company’s attitude to centralized v. decentralized spending). But do not waste the  opportunity to lead (and not lag) by carving out a position before your business partners out-manoeuver you via a fait-accompli. To lead you must anticipate demand, and establish a pragmatic position that takes advantage of your business customer’s desire to drive business value using new technologies.

First, prioritize the “asks.” Figure out what technology areas are interesting to your customers (SaaS/cloud; mobility applications; better form factors; re-imagined processes?). Determine the risk to the business, and the value (or cost) drivers.

For example, one sort of driver is BYOD. This is a feature of “IT consumerization,” where the demand is driven by executives and employees for better tools in the form of mobile devices and computers plus some of the services that run on them (such as email, calendar, file sharing, and SaaS). The conundrum is “what is your policy?” In the past, your default answer would probably have been “hell, no!” because of concerns associated with information leakage or the cost of support. These days, your response could be one of the following:

* “We only support and supply 1-3 kinds of devices and will not allow integration to corporate data or communications to any other device beyond 1, 2 or 3.”

* “Hey, employee, you bring your own device, any kind and we’ll reimburse you $100 / month to make sure you are connected 7×24.”

* “You cannot use any device for corporate / business / government agency use except the One You Are Provided With by IT.”

* “Use any device you want, just don’t call us if you have a problem and you are responsible for any corporate data on it if you lose the device.”

Consequently, you might end up supporting End User devices (various laptops, smartphones, tablets, USB drives, printers), Collaboration and FileShare applications (Google Docs, SharePoint, DropBox, Gdrive, Skydrive, Box.net), Cloud Services (AWS, Azure, Rackspace), and SaaS platforms (ServiceNow, Salesforce.com, TimeWorx, Clarity). Are you prepared? Have you gone through the cost/ benefits?

Second, you need to make sure you have assessed your risks, and taken a position on how to mitigate these risks. Ideally, you will have developed a policy on how to avoid or mitigate certain types of outcome (for instance, if you are concerned that an employee might steal sensitive information, your mitigation is to have a policy, mandatory training, personal agreements and some form of DRM for sensitive information that keeps the data tied to a device, identity or electronic token).

You will likely study your position regarding:

* Security (authentication, encryption, DLP);

* Data Classification Security (data at rest, data in transit, customer information, financial records, emails, quotes, invoices, proposals, marketing plans, price lists);

* Impact on the Production environment (performance and capacity);

* Impact on Integration (what interfaces front end or backend will be required?);

* Compatibility with Legacy apps and their usability (for devices without a keyboard, or large screen);

* Impact on the Service Catalog and Service Desk (do you have a business or operational relationship with the provider, supplier or vendor for the proposed technology; should the technology be supported?);

* Impact on Business Value (is the new technology cheaper, scalable, more functional, easier to use, easier to integrate, or promotes faster T2M?)

* Impact on roles, cost structures and governance (who pays, who supplies, who supports, who secures and what happens if something goes wrong?).

* Your pride: are you legitimately bringing up risks or putting up roadblocks?

Your job as an executive is do most of the pre-thinking or pre-processing. Will IT departments eventually turn into Service Brokers (by embracing consumerization, outsourcing, etc) , or melt away and be subsumed into other organizations, or remain monolithic cost centers deploying very old applications until the company ceases to operate? Only you can help decide your own fate by leading, and not being reactive.

Here is a recap of some of the lessons I have learned:

1. Know that your customer’s expectations and knowledge has changed.

2. The barriers to providing an app or device have lowered.

3. Your customers might be unaware of some of the hidden costs and pitfalls if they don’t follow some mandated rules or laws (related to security, privacy, payment card transactions, and stock market listing).

4. Cloud computing is going to affect the economics of data centers and applications. Your department may have some need for a private data center, and customized applications, but such use had better be strategic (i.e., very selective); Cloud companies have scale that you can’t compete with otherwise – and customization of applications is overrated and too costly (customization must bring strategic advantage and not be for its own sake).

5. It is better to have an agenda that you proactively discuss with your customers about consumerization, Cloud, SaaS and changing technology expectations; this is better than having to react after you find out that your customers have already been deploying systems behind your back. And if you are not responsive to your customer’s ideas, your customers will go around you – now, more than ever.

There’s a lot more to discuss. Join me in the conversation.

Mike Ross <TechOpsExec@gmail.com>.

#techopsexec