Why it's not bad to be like King Canute

Today I attended an interesting session about HP Storage but in one of the positioning presentations the presenter said we should not be like King Canute trying to stop the tide of consumerisation.  As someone that has been championing the BYOD concept since before it was called that way back in 2004 I have actually been exactly like King Canute.

Why is that you may ask?  You have been telling us about this for years and not been trying to resist it!!

The reason I say this is that the legend of King Canute has been slightly turned around.  He did not have his throne placed in front of the sea to prove he could prevent the tide coming in as many think.  He actually had his throne put there so he could prove that he could NOT stop the tide coming in.  In the last 8 or 9 years I too have stood in front of that tide and it is gratifying that final people are starting to recognise that it cannot be stopped.  Even if you build walls in front of it the tide will eventually beat them down and come in anyway.

It is now the consumer that is dictating the tools they wish to use to do their work.  At the beginning of the era of the PC few of us owned them or were exposed to these devices.  Nowadays everyone has a number of computing devices to their fingertips ranging from the Digital TV recorder to the mobile phone.  Few people retain their fear of technology and most just want to use it without the complexity, a wish Apple masterfully played to.  If you think about it this is only natural, a craftsman should pick his own tools and make it his own, because every craftsman uses his own method to achieve his best work.

We are really starting to see the end of the era of IT control of computing diminishing.  Those IT departments that stand in front of this will be swept away, if you want to survive you must embrace it and learn to work with it. Much as small IT groups took the power of choice from the mainframe driven computer departments of old by buying PCs, the end user is now doing the same to us.  Much as the mainframes were driven into the background our role will be to provide the business specific cloud services these end users want to consume.

Once you have admitted this to yourself you can begin to plan how you provide your business with the correct level of service and security within an environment where you don't control.  That is the really interesting challenge we find ourselves pitted against now.