Change: Inevitable (and fast, it seems!)

I guess anyone can be a prophet if they predict the obvious and wait for it to happen. In a previous post, I had discussed the increasing pressure to implement personal devices in the K-12 environment. Of course, I was only writing based on what I was seeing and reading elsewhere. Fast forward a few months and it seems that the pressure is increasing... and quickly.

I've talked to at least three school districts in the past week that are all getting pressure to implement some type of new device into the environment. For districts that think it's only happening to them or that it's only in our area or state, this isn't true. It's across the country and across various enterprises. Take a look at this Gartner blog post. I'm not as concerned about the market share of a particular company, but note the initial comments about consumerization affecting the enterprise and the "...increasing number of Macs being brought into the enterprise." These are the conversations I've been having, so I suppose I simply wanted to get a few thoughts down to state to the K-12 CIO that "you're not alone."

It feels that way for some, though. Administrators see these new devices (the iPad being the most common example) and demand that their IT staff get these in the classroom. I've seen some of the applications that are out there and I can certainly see the educational benefit. For the things they can do, devices like this have been built for ease of use, fast response and crisp audio/video output. Their cry is "why not?"

The local IT staff has been conditioned to look out for the district. They know that they are most likely the ones that will field the calls when things don't work as well as first imagined. Do you want to print? Does this need to hook to a projector? Do you want to use Flash-based applications? Do you want these apps to go to the web through our required proxy solution? Who's handling the iTunes synchronization? Are these being signed out and in? How are we keeping these charged? If we're in an Active Directory environment, are these devices supposed to communicate with local servers?

You get the idea. By the way, some of these hurdles can be overcome. Right now, though, this seems to be the latest example of one segment of administration pushing for implementation while the IT staff begs for time and resources to better understand and account for the business requirements. As an IT leader, you're right to ask these questions. However, be aware that there are times where the situation dictates that you implement or be viewed as a roadblock to progress.

A quick search will reveals countless articles about consumer devices entering the enterprise and the need for our security models to change. This is one blog entry discussing this trend and it's easy to find others. Without dragging out the crystal ball again, I'll simply state that we're probably all facing major change in the way we've thought about our networks and securing them. For now, take some solace - limited though it may be - in the fact that it isn't "just you". It's all of us. As that blog entry indicates, it could be more about the data than the device moving forward.

The thought of data driving it all made me think of the Web 2.0 video "The Machine is Us/ing Us".