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11.08.07
IT Staff Must Adapt
 By
Dan Morrill
This is not what you want to hear from anyone if you work in technology.
The sad reality is that while companies learn to do things, and business should drive IT, people who are in IT and not adapting are getting fired.
"We've cut IT staff by 20%, and we're providing a whole lot more in terms of IT services," says Ken Harris, CIO at nutritional products manufacturer Shaklee. Harris started with a mashup platform from StrikeIron; he found mashups such an effective way to integrate multiple Web services that he turned to Web-based service providers to replace in-house functions. Now, Shaklee gets its ERP from Workday and search from Visual Sciences, and it's looking at other IT functions that software as a service can replace. Source: Information Week
Not something that overworked and harried IT Staff want to hear, but a dawning reality that many of us in the industry are going to have to face and work with. Forget the training budget, you have to be out there now learning new stuff, and being an effective agent for change, not a line in the sand saying no more. Web 2.0 drives a lot of business value, and IT Staff that do not understand this, and are not willing to deal with it, will end up looking for jobs.
The hardest jobs I have to fill are the ones requiring Silverlight or Adobe Air, and I am looking for folks who have some Flash Skills but have been playing with Silverlight for the last year.
What makes this more interesting is the influence this will have on the security department. If the security department is not ready and able to help secure the corporation against the increasingly common security flaws in Web 2.0 technologies, then essentially we are dealing with the same thing.
Technology moves at its own pace, the smart money is in working with the business, learning Web 2.0, and getting ready for Web 3.0 which if the predictions hold true will be more centered on authority and user generated content.
Security departments will find themselves increasingly working with products that tie the desktop to the browser. Security departments will also find themselves working increasingly in Intellectual Property protection, working through permission sets, and auditing of Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 applications.
We need good security people, good developers, good business managers, good leaders to work with the evolutionary changes that are happening with SaaS, HaaS (Hardware as a service), and the whole host of technological changes that are happening in the company today.
In all this, businesses will drive the changes, and IT, Security, DBA's, and the whole back end support system has to be familiar with the technologies. Without it we are stuck, we will not innovate, we will not understand the next level of threats, nor will we be able to manage them, defend against them, and train users in what to look for.
Comments
About
the Author:
Dan Morrill has been in the information security field for 18 years, both
civilian and military, and is currently working on his Doctor of Management.
Dan shares his insights on the important security issues of today through
his blog, Managing
Intellectual Property & IT Security, and is an active participant in the
ITtoolbox blogging community.
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