Most employees are frustrated with IT

How workers feel about the pace of enterprise IT change.

Users want Web-based alternatives to what their companies provide. They want free and unfettered access to Web 2.0 and social media from their cubicle desks. They want to use their own, prettier laptops. They think their technology is more advanced than that which they are provided. In short: they want iPhones, not Treos.

And while your initial reaction may be a "cry me a river" muttered (barely) under your breath, there is more to this picture than bratty employees wanting more, more more. First, dissatisfied customers--even wrongly dissatisfied customers--should be the concern of any IT professional. Second, Gartner expects this problem to get worse before it gets better as the "digital generation" constitutes a larger portion of the workforce, predicting that the number of workers who will be dissatisfied with the rate of IT change will jump from its current 32 percent to more than 50 percent by 2013.

Advised Gartner's research director, Robin Simpson in a previous report on the topic, "The traditional response from the IT department was to say 'no', but that's no longer an option."

"You can't hold back the changes being driven by your user population by force, or they will simply conspire against you. But you can't just relax control. You need to find a way to delineate between the business and personal computing worlds so they can work side-by-side and the boundary can be secured," explained Simpson.

[Snail image by WTL photos, CC 2.0]