It's funny to read that the greatest barrier to introducing 2.0 tools in an organisation is the internal IT department. They just don't get it, do they... They blame the technology, see security leaks everywhere, blame the tools for not being mature enough, call Web 2.0 a hype
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However, our nerd friends must learn to see what's behind the technology and start to realise that Web 2.0 is a philosophy and not just a technology. Grant, the software has not reached full maturity yet but does this mean that its potential has to be ignored? I cannot understand that the same people blabbering about innovation, block every initiative with the 2.0 label. The following example shows that it is high time for a reality check.
The IT department of a large European Bank decided to offshore part of its development and systems maintenance to Asia, they are not the first and certainly not the last. Oddly enough, they did not put an extranet in place or included the third party in their demilitarized zone so how on earth can the different teams work together? Yup, they send the specs by means of email and code delivery is done by FTP... Just imagine what business benefits a 2.0 platform could yield : decrease in email traffic, sharing and versioning of documents, one single knowledge repository, IM improving the accessibility to name a few. In the end, they have to resort to a third party (us) to put the platform in place. Unfortunately, the same goes for the internal IT departments working together : e-mail is still the preferred means of communication... and this is 2007.
You will understand that it's pretty difficult to talk about business/IT alignment if the IT department cannot align itself in the first place. No wonder people say that IT doesn't matter . If they keep up with this behaviour , they will indeed become an extinct species in the years to come.