Dinosaurs Masquerading as CIO's - Revisited

Last June, Sandy Kemsley commented on how far CIOs are behind the times with respect to adoption of Web 2.0 technologies based upon survey results published in CIO Insight magazine. Well, CIO Insight recently published their 'Top Trends 2007' analysis and the news on this front isn't any better than it was last year.

Here's the breakdown of response percentages stating that the indicated technology is of "no interest" and "not on the radar screen" (percentage in parentheses is from the 2006 report that Sandy referenced):

SaaS: 37%  (32%)
SOA: 27%  (30%)
RSS: 38%  (38%)
Podcasts: 49% (not referenced)
Social Networking (tags, social bookmarks, virtual communities): 51%  (51%)
Wikis: 46% (46%)

This year's survey sheds some light on why this is with the results of three follow-up questions. The first asked is Web 2.0 technologies increase security risks, to which 74% agreed. Next, respondents were asked if their company encourages employees to experiment with free or inexpensive Web-based applications - 68% disagreed. Finally, 73% agreed with the statement that the corporate IT department should evaluate new technologies first before any users try them out.

The answers to the follow-ups lend credence to IT management feeling threatened by Web 2.0 technologies, and as long as they have their hands at the organization's IT controls, I have doubts that adoption of these emergent technologies is going to occur at the pace that some folks would have you believe. It will be futile to stop the spread of these technologies over time, but it looks like a substantial number of IT managers are going to give it their best shot trying.

Perhaps the third time - next year's survey - will be the charm. If there isn't significant improvement in these numbers, the Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 crowd will need to realize that the chasm here is much wider than they originally thought.

Comments

[Mike Bohlmann]

A lot of large IT operations are centered around controls and keeping users from negatively impacting their systems by doing things they shouldn't be doing. Web 2.0 reverses that trend by giving users a great deal of power. The benefits of using user-driven systems introduce chaos as seen by the more rigid forms of IT management as typically seen in large organizations. Smaller organizations that usually follow more dynamic IT management philosophies are going to have more willingness to see where these technologies fit into their organizations. However, that doesn't mean these organizations can simple install these user-driven systems and let the users loose. They need their own change management to make sure users put the most value into these systems. The new concepts like wikis, blogs, and such associated with Web 2.0 are only as valuable as the content being provided.

[Sandy Kemsley]

The chasm is definitely there -- corporate IT seems to be pretty freaked out by what might happen if users get their hands on Web 2.0 technologies (namely, that IT becomes even more of a commodity than it is now), so no real surprise that there's still a lot of resistance.