Users no longer waiting on IT solutions

One problem with the approach described below, can be the comparison of apples & oranges - when the developer of a solution has moved on to another job or company, users may not be able to reconcile reports they produce with the "official" reports that IT produces. Many years ago, we had to repeatedly explain that the "production" reports represented reality when the database was last copied (usually midnight) to people who were trying to defend different numbers they produced from the database in real-time (right now).

Who needs IT experts? Workers take control - Yahoo! News:
"SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Savvy office workers frustrated that their on-the-job computer tools don't function as smoothly as, say, an Apple iPod are taking matters into their own hands.

No longer are they relying on company technicians, or information technology (IT) administrators, to choose the software needed to get the job done. They know how to pluck tools right off the Web.

Industry observers use the term 'consumerization' to describe the phenomenon whereby office workers are less likely to wait for the IT folks to equip them.

Analyst Rebecca Wettemann of software research firm Nucleus Research says her company's surveys of corporate technology users frequently turn up the question: 'Why can't I do what I want without getting an OK from IT?'

All of this poses a challenge to Microsoft Corp's (MSFT.O) business software franchise, and may be one of the under-appreciated reasons it's trying to acquire Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O) with its 500-million-strong base of Web consumers.

'Individual people, not IT organizations, are driving the next wave of (technology) adoption,' Forrester Research said in a recent report.

Forrester refers to the movement toward user control and individual empowerment as "Technology Populism," others refer to it as "Office 2.0." Less sympathetically, consulting firm Yankee Group, in a 2007 report entitled "Zen and the Art of Rogue Employee Management," sees it as a threat for IT managers.
. . .
"Established software companies like Microsoft have less ability to promise a product in the future and have customers wait for it," Wettemann says. "When something I can find on the Web does 70 percent of what I want, today, why should I wait?"

Microsoft and rival Google Inc (GOOG.O) have come to represent polar opposites in this debate over how to handle employees who want more say over their office technology.

Google has targeted individual business users by appealing directly to their frustrated consumer impulses.

But Yahoo's similarities to Google in terms of Web delivery, consumer focus and use of open standards technology could speed Microsoft's own belated moves in this direction if it can succeed in acquiring Yahoo and keep its loyal audience. "