The corporate IT is invaded by the consumer world: wireless, PDA, messenger, Skype, you name it!

The peoples shops around for entertainment and convenience. While corporate IT is not expected to provide entertainment, it is judged by the convenience it provides.

I have heard countless times complain of IT senior executives about their users that demand convenience.

Users expect corporate intranet to rival Google, purchasing process to be friendly like Amazon, to contact workmates via messenger like they contact their friends.
They expect corporate phonebook to have at least LinkedIN functionalities, expect knowledge management systems like Wikipedia and the list can go on for ever.

The average IT executive thinks the corporate IT is like army: you have to suffer to strengthen yourself! Rough edges are not only accepted but expected. One has to fight with cumbersome processes, bloated web pages, and weird rules to perform even the most simple tasks.

They position themselves like the drill sergeant of corporate IT!

Even if your CFO will be happy with the cost reduction you achieved, it will be very hard to live with a crowd of angry customers.

Your users will compare your offering with the convenience industry outside and you will be in real trouble!

These days most employees are knowledge workers. They don’t need punch clocks, complicated processes or bloated software.

The first priority for you is to remove any obstacle preventing them to achieve highest intellectual productivity. Second give them tools they like and use happily. As Ubuntu creator Mark Shuttleworth use to say:

Nice IS a feature!

It is now time to throw away your campaign hat and bring in a charmed flute!

I jumped the fence!

After 7 year, 7 very challenging years building the Rompetrol IT, I decided to return to the vendor side. This time, on my own.

Yes, I started my own consulting practice. I don’t want to use the blog for advertising, so I wont go into details. Enough said it is, of course, IT related.

Like always CISCO Expo was a great event. Congratulations to the event team!

Although the venue was clearly overwhelmed by the number of participants (around 700 according to Bogdan – CISCO Country Manager)

My presentation went smoothly. I even manage to get couple of questions! For a Romanian public this is quite an achievement.
I wonder where CISCO is going. Their new tag line “Human Network”, all the communication centered on people …

May be they want to achieve something like:

Are they taking the same path Intel took a while ago? They want to become a retail brand? The network in every home to have “CISCO Inside”?

Tomorrow I will the whole day at CISCO Expo.

I have a presentation in the morning about Rompetrol voice network and I moderate together with CISCO country manager an afternoon session “Paths to Growth” reserved for IT Executives.

I will be back with some impressions.

Through some web “magic” I found two CIO blogs:

CIO Web Musings: http://petesiegel.blogspot.com/

and another one:

Keith Parnell :: Marketing CIO: http://keith.jaseblog.com/

Enjoy Reading