While most agree that consumerization of storage (and, in general, IT) is occurring and will have important consequences, disagreements regarding the rate, scope, and scale of the changes often are significant and vituperative. Usually, however, these arguments reveal biases regarding what a decision-maker wants to happen to IT and not clear insight into a likely consumerization path. For example, for those who want to see IT organizations lose influence, consumerization promises to substitute third-party, online services for internal IT systems and personnel. For those who want to see IT organizations persist – or even grow – consumerization will catalyze new demand for IT capabilities but ultimately fail to deliver, thereby generating a new expansion of IT budgets and influence within businesses.
However, the most likely effect of consumerization is a steady, not cataclysmic, expansion of complex IT offerings from online service providers, coupled with a rapid increase in emphasis on infrastructure-as-a-service product capabilities from traditional and new hardware and software suppliers. Ultimately, then, the "consumerization of IT" is best thought of as a style of usage and service delivery that will include increased use of third-party services coupled with a significant role for evolved IT organizations, and not mainly as a prescription for a radically new IT market structure.
Action Item: No IT capability should be retired simply because the "consumerization of IT" someday may obsolete it. Prudent business leaders should seek the benefits of simpler IT in whatever form it may take – service or product, delivered externally or internally.
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