Interop New York: 'Consumerization' Most Transformative Force In Enterprise IT

That was the word from Interop New York's kickoff keynote presentation Wednesday, where three technology observers -- Citrix President and CEO Mark Templeton, Cisco Vice President of Network Systems and Security Solutions Marie Hattar, and The New York Times technology columnist David Pogue -- offered perspective on why businesses need to change to meet that trend.

At present, argued Templeton, people can have a richer and more productive technology experience with their personal devices than they can at the office. The reason is that most enterprises are tied to legacy infrastructure that's slow to evolve -- and in a decade that's seen an explosion of consumercentric, endlessly customizable technologies, that's now a problem.

"Our experience as consumers is that we go home and use our own PC and do online banking or e-commerce shopping, and that's a better experience than we have inside the enterprise with lock-down systems," he argued. "About 2002 was when that line was crossed."

Templeton divided enterprise technology into three eras: mainframe computing in the 1970s and 1980s; distributed computing, with technology like servers and desktops that was horizontally deployed, from about 1990 to 2002; and the time from 2002 into the present, which he described as the "on-demand services era."

"We don't think as service providers right now," he said. "Traditionally, we predict the kinds of volume, capacity and capabilities that are needed. We built things based on [those needs] and users accept what we put out there. Maybe not enthusiastically all the time, but they were required to accept it."

The power has shifted to the user, Templeton said, and technology providers must now push toward what he called "the holy grail," the ability to deliver all IT services on-demand. Virtualization, he added, was changing how enterprises could do that "at every layer of the stack."

"Less is more," Templeton said. "This is the elimination of moving parts. The architecture of distributed computing was designed 25 years ago. "Consumerization" is a transformational element that will force more IT change over the next 10 years than any other trend."

Businesses could already see that happening in a new generation of young workers that "grew up digital."

"They're going to force the issue," Templeton said. "If you don't respond, guess what? They'll go to someone that will respond."

He urged users to heed the words of Abraham Lincoln when assessing how to modernize IT infrastructure: "If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend six hours sharpening my ax."

Tools like Citrix's new Pay-As-You-Grow Netscaler tool -- a tiered pricing structure for Citrix's application acceleration, load-balancing and Web security appliances, announced at Interop Wednesday -- are crucial to making technology deployment as customized as possible, he argued.

"So many of us rush to execute and then run into a problem I call incrementalism," Templeton said. "You solved individual problems but didn't solve the real problem because you didn't take time to think it through. We need to make IT services as simple as turning on a television. It's a self-service relationship."

It was a notion echoed by Cisco's Hattar, who said consumers who have access to the latest in mobile devices, video and workspace experience tools often wonder why they can't enjoy similar productivity and technology in the workplace.

"Those are key transformations, and we're seeing them everywhere," she said. "Sixty percent of all Cisco network traffic is video."

Hattar touted Cisco's recently introduced Borderless Networks, what the networking titan calls next-generation architecture and for which it recently refreshed its line of Integrated Services Routers.

The Times' Pogue brought a lighter-hearted look at consumer gadgets like Verizon's MiFi -- the telco's personal WiFi hotspot devices -- and ChaCha, the mobile search platform and question-answering service. But his messages were the same: Convergence, customization and the advanced nature of even basic consumer applications on mobile devices are forcing businesses to re-evaluate what technology they can provide to their workers.

"'Smartphone' doesn't really do it anymore," Pogue said, "because these are devices that don't do just e-mail. I settled on the term 'app phone.' This is a whole new category."