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Virtualization and private cloud trends, value propositions, obstacles, risk mitigation, and vendor selection are key topics in this December 2009 EMC interview with Frank Gens, IDC’s senior vice president and chief analyst*.

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* IDC Analyst Connection sponsored by EMC, Virtualization and Private Clouds: Trends and Directions, Doc#IDC_863, Dec 2009.

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January 05, 2010

The Continuing Consumerization Of Enterprise IT

Today's plethora of EMC Iomega announcements at CES made me reflect on yet another subtle yet profound influence on the entire enterprise IT space -- the impact of consumer technology.

My wife (the psychology major!) tells me that we're hardwired to react to sudden shifts in our environment; we're not so adapted to recognizing and reacting to subtle shifts over longer periods.

And if you're in the enterprise IT game, you may not be noticing just how much consumerization is changing how we think about enterprise IT.

Consumerization Makes Everyone An IT Expert -- Sort Of

We all know how our personal technology works -- our desktops and notebooks, our favorite applications and web sites, our high-speed internet, our smartphones.  Many of us have access to powerful tools at home, and we know how they work.

Indeed, it's not unusual to have better tech at home than in the office these days ...

When we come into the workplace, we expect at least the same experience, or better.  We expect our stuff to work, to be easy to use, to do what we want it to do.  We don't need IT experts at home; we shouldn't really need them in the workplace, either.

As an example, what's the better way to sell virtual desktops to the business?  Telling them they'll save money, or knowledge workers can use any device they choose, and their experience will follow them around? 

Hint: the latter pitch tends to work better :-)

What's the impact?  We, as IT professionals, need to drop the old-school perception that many of our users are complete technology morons, and start to assume that our employees are actually quite adept at using technology to get their jobs done.

Several years ago when we rolled out our internal social media platform (EMC|One), we didn't really provide any training.  After all, you don't need training to use Google, Facebook, Twitter, et. al.  It worked out pretty well.

More importantly, our enterprise users now expect enterprise IT to be as easy to use as any consumer application.  Gone are people willing to accept complicated UIs and obtuse menu structures, not to mention applications that are sluggish or throw errors.

The consumerization of IT has made all of our users far more demanding, hasn't it?

Many Enterprise IT Concepts Can Work At A Consumer Level

There are lots of examples, but let me just point at a few recent examples from the EMC Iomega portfolio:

* a decent multi-protocol 8TB RAID array for $1899

* a decent storage virtualization device for $99

* a workable desktop virtualization solution for basically "free"

* a multimedia content server for $249

* and, my personal favorite, a 1TB storage device for $97, with free delivery and a 3 year warranty

Just a few years ago, each of these devices would only have been found in sophisticated IT environments being run by sophisticated IT people.  Now they're just something you click and buy with not too much thought.

The Iomega Rationale

Like many of EMC's acquisitions, many people thought us a bit crazy when we laid out a bunch of money for Iomega, which was basically known for Zip drives.  I mean, who would want to get into a low-margin consumer market?

Yep, we were crazy, alright.  But now, I think people are starting to see a bit of sanity in our thinking.

First, the world's most efficient technology supply chain, distribution and support can be found in consumer electronics.  The consumer stuff is far cheaper to build, sell and support than traditional enterprise IT.  A lot cheaper.  And anything we can learn from their business and apply to EMC's more traditional IT business is a win for our customers.

Second, concepts that work well at a small scale can sometimes work well at a larger scale.  I can't go into too many details, but bits and pieces of Iomega technology are finding their way into other EMC products.

Third, concepts that work well at a large scale can sometimes work well at a smaller scale -- as evidenced by the examples I gave above.

The New Thinking

At one time in our industry, it was easy to point to one technology solution and say "well, that's just for consumers" and then point at another and say "well, that's just for enterprises".

Those distinctions aren't really all that useful any more.

As consumerization of IT continues, the lines will continue to blur, and trying to categorize products, companies or technologies as one or another won't make much sense.

Because, after all, aren't enterprises are nothing more than a bunch of consumers who come to work every day?

Posted at 05:21 PM in Big Ideas (hopefully ...), EMC Viewpoint, Technology Debates, Wide World of Vendors | Permalink

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