IT organizations that we talk to often feel besieged. We have seen a flurry of new policies, position papers and dictates come forth in recent weeks, laying out restrictions on user procurement of technology. These have been designed to stop everything from user groups signing up for Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions, to users breaking technology policy and buying different devices for use in the office.

It’s a losing battle. Within the next 36 months the typical enterprise will see the IT group have to throw in the towel and accept that fact that user departments have installed over 50% of the technology then in use — and “standards” will have been set aside freely in favour of getting what they think will solve their problems in place.

One reason this is coming to a head, we think, is because for a long time you needed to be in IT to understand what to install, and how to make it work. As personal computers and smart phones spread through the consumer population, however, this unique expertise faded from view. For several years now, for instance, CIOs have found themselves doing a once/year IT strategy review at Board of Directors level, only to get questions such as “plasma or LCD for my flat panel television?” thrown at them. Consumer technology is often one — sometimes two — generations in front of corporate technology. The shoe is now on the other foot.

So, too, with services and applications. Business process outsourcing comes with the supporting technology: BPO is evaluated by the business, not IT. Buying a wiki as a service, or setting up a blog on Wordpress or Blogger, or using Salesforce.com, hasn’t been a traumatic experience. Yes, there are many security, integration and cost issues associated with these decisions: the point is that, with the average backlog for projects coming through IT sitting at more than three years, with IT budgets compressing through 2007 and into 2008, and with a sense of urgency in the business that the business model may be broken, or new products must be brought to market, etc., something has had to give — and that something is deference to IT’s rules.

There are many IT leaders who have taken the position that this is just another swing of the decentralization pendulum, and that these issues will be recentralized in a year or so. This time, I wouldn’t count on it. BPO, for instance, takes the work out of IT’s control permanently: these are not departmental solutions waiting to move into the data centre. So, too, why move from Salesforce.com to some in-house SFA/CRM application attached to your ERP system, when it’s working well? Even the most control-oriented CIOs know that they can’t just block these external sites: shutting down the business in that way is a one way ticket to the door.

So, too, with devices. Since last month’s Macworld, for instance, we have fielded multiple enquiries about the MacBook Air — every one of them coming from 100% Windows shops, typically ones where laptops are a privilege, not the common solution. Why is this? We look at these people and discover that they like their iPod, either have or are planning to buy an iPhone, and have typically chosen to buy a MacBook for their university-age student rather than deal with Windows debugging by long distance phone. They know there’s no compatibility issues; they know Office is Office; they know IT is just being stubborn. (Remember that no less a consumer magazine than PC World rated the MacBook as the #1 Windows laptop in 2007.) IT people know about clients for client/server systems still in production that won’t work: it doesn’t matter. The pendulum has swung. Often the hardware is bought. The mixed environment doesn’t cost more on a TCO basis. How do you fight it?

Our position is that you don’t. Instead, you use these changes to your advantage. Define several “standard” machines, not just one: when choice is offered, 99% of users will stay within your choices. (As with any vendor, plan your “product line” to cover various classes of “consumer”.) Use the upcoming diversity to push for reinvestment, instead, in any service you currently run that limits your ability to service the users. Define the necessary architectural building blocks to allow all these different BPO services, SaaS offerings, etc. to integrate easily. In other words, treat your own IT offering as any sourcing partner would: a new client has to be made to work. Most sourcing deals now have the client holding title to the assets (thereby making decisions about them) while the sourcer operates the resulting mélange across their multiple customers. You can, too.

All of these issues are, of course, Wars of Religion for many IT people. They are for users as well, but in a different way. Users think about technology in terms of what it can do for them. The best technology simply works — and works in ways that fits their job. (Retail chain buyers, for instance, may well spend 200 days a year on the road, working from hotels, as do many executives: they want highly reliable hardware coupled with simple configurability. There is generally no help desk support when you are eight or more time zones away.) IT people tend to look at this as a control issue: their estimation of their own value includes making these decisions for the good of the firm. Forget it. The war is lost. Move on and find another way to declare victory, or more of the work will move out of IT’s control.