There's a lot to like about web-based, web 2.0 collaboration tools like Socialtext [1] and GroupSwim [2], but they take the software out of the control of IT and put it into the hands of the business user. In a post this week on the Forrester Information and Knowledge Management Professionals blog, Gil Yehuda predicts tensions will develop between IT and users as these types of services proliferate.
It's no secret that these online tools cost less, and they put the software in the control of the end user. This makes it easier to get projects off the ground because it doesn't require IT involvement. Naturally, this makes IT upset because it's out of their control, as Yehuda points out, and it's much more difficult for them to manage. Personally, I think it's more about control and less about management.
If it's possible for business units to find ways to get their work done without going through IT as another layer of bureaucracy, it makes sense, to me, for them to do it. Even in a down economy work needs to get done and if users can find a cheaper and more efficient way to do that, I say more power to them (and less to IT).
That said, companies do need to find a way to make sure there are sanctioned products, so that they aren't faced at some point with pulling content from a variety of sources. A big question is: What happens if these small web 2.0 service vendors suddenly go out of business? What happens to your content? So you need to have some centralized management of the process and IT can provide that at a high level. But companies also need to be flexible because if these tools save money and provide more flexibility, it would be foolish to block them.
For more information:
-see Yehuda's post [3] on Forrester
Related Articles:
Web 2.0 news from FierceContentManagement [4]
Links:
[1] http://www.socialtext.com/
[2] http://groupswim.com/
[3] http://blogs.forrester.com/information_management/2008/12/predicting-the.html
[4] http://www.fiercecontentmanagement.com/tags/web-2-0