An IT Perspective – I Don’t Have Time for This Social Computing Stuff !

Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of delivering social computing solutions to big companies.  We hear about their use cases, and we love evolving Social Sites quickly to meet customer needs.  But years ago, I worked for the CIO of a $2B corporation, and I remember having a different perspective on these projects. 

Today, while helping out at an architectural design session at the Microsoft Technology Center, I got a good reminder of what it’s like to be in the information technology professional’s role.

We sell Social Sites to companies who have chosen Microsoft SharePoint as a key platform.  For the most part, our customers are large companies who have a lots of very smart folks (knowledge workers).  How well those folks do their jobs (how quickly they generate new ideas and turn them into solutions, how quickly they find the right person with the right expertise, how well they work together across time zones and geographies) generally determines how well these companies compete.  So these companies are almost always implementing technologies to try to give themselves an advantage.  And many of these companies have acquired other companies over time.

From an IT perspective, this often means that life is messy.  Generally, there are many systems that contain profile data.  Often, multiple authentication systems are in place.  Quite frequently, SharePoint has been deployed in different ways across multiple farms.

Against this backdrop, it’s easy to see why some IT Professionals might classify social computing as too low of a priority.  In my days working for the CIO, I remember several projects that crossed my desk that made me throw my hands up in the air and laugh.  And it is possible that your company is in such dire technology straits that you should not try implementing social computing or you should at least take things slowly.

But before you print this out and go running to that business sponsor who’s been bugging you to get social computing implemented, it’s worth taking a step back and considering a couple questions

1. What is the role of IT investment in your company?
2. What happens if you don’t pursue a social computing project that runs on standard platforms?
3. Can you kill two (or three birds) with one business-sponsored-stone? 

First off, your company’s IT strategy may make doing social computing or nearly any IT project a bad idea.  Some companies have an explicit strategy of driving direct IT costs as low as possible.  If your company has this strategy, you should stop reading now, print this out, and go chat with that business sponsor about having a more strategic conversation about the role of IT.  But I think it’s quite rare for companies with lots of knowledge workers to pursue these kinds of strategies these days.  Today, most companies realize a certain level of technology investment is required not only to increase productivity but also to recruit and retain talented workers. 

So what happens if you just push back or drag your feet on a project request?  In addition to increasing tension with business stakeholders (who eventually have a say in IT budgets), what we’re seeing more and more of is users, departments and even whole business units doing stuff on their own.  Whether it’s throwing a server under a desk somewhere, subscribing to some SaaS-based offering, or just hordes of end-users setting up a company group on Facebook or LinkedIn, this is pretty much a worst case scenario for IT Professionals.  Not only is there real risk that company data is going places you don’t know and can’t control, but if the users really like these solutions, you’re really going to increase tension with business stakeholders when you shut the thing down (especially if you don’t have a viable alternative). 

The last question really comes down to what’s in it for you to do one of these projects.  You might get some personal recognition and valuable career experience implementing one of these solutions.  But it also could be a lot of work.  So if you’re looking at the challenges you already have on your plate, maybe a social computing project is good justification to address some key infrastructure needs.  For example, if you’ve been trying to get to a good user profile story with data pulled from line of business and HR systems and a good search capability, implementing SharePoint user profiles and My Sites may get you one of your key goals while moving social computing forward.  (SharePoint has something called the Business Data Catalog that does this job quite nicely and it gets even better with the Business Connectivity Services in SharePoint 2010.) 

I get that most IT organizations are facing real challenges.  I had plenty of times working in IT where the only good days were the ones when the phone didn’t ring.  And listening to IT Professionals at our prospects and customers often reminds me of those days.  But if you step back and consider the big picture and how things are likely to turn out, you may come to the conclusion that you can’t afford NOT to address social computing.  And you might just help your company, your business sponsors and yourself all at the same time.