Barrier to Web 2.0 — IT Departments

jcatcw writes "Wikis, social networks, and other Web 2.0 technologies are finding resistance inside companies from the very people who should be rolling them out: the IT staff. The National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) in London had to bypass IT to get Web 2.0 technologies to end users. Both Morgan Stanley and Pfizer are rolling out Web 2.0 projects, but it took some grass roots organizing to get there."

Barrier to non-existent technology...

[ZeroFactorial]

Wow. I never thought I'd see something this ridiculous even given space on slashdot.

"Web" 2.0 is the biggest marketing farce that's ever been created. It's NOT a technology!
It's a name for a subset of existing technologies used to make things "more interactive."

This is, hands down, the most idiotic claim that I've ever seen; okay, so maybe Al Gore takes the cake, but this comes close...

work-around services a new industry

[tenzig_112]

A company I work for has started to offer next-gen video hosting services (w/ one-to-one tracking, etc.) to customers who heretofore thought they simply could not have due to the intransigence of their own IT departments. So far, it's been interesting to hear the stories of the people who feel trapped by the people they hired to make this sort of thing possible.

Re:Possible Explanation

[garcia]

Perhaps it's because IT departments actually know how complicated, messy, potentially insecure and how awful support of such "projects" are going to be. As a general rule of thumb, tech-types don't usually give into the hype about things like Web 2.0 that columnists, marketers and your usual assortment of weirdos do.

Fuck Web 2.0, IT departments are slow to move on any project except those that somehow benefit IT itself. We have an extraordinarily difficult time getting IT to update broken links on our website (we used to have access via the shitty CMS they were running but they now took that away too) nevermind solutions such as chat, online appointment scheduling, or additional databases to store information captured from web forms.

We have had to go to third party outfits that specialize in hosting their own web application solutions and paying them yearly sums of money to do for us what IT will not. Not a single department has a decent relationship with IT at any of the last few places I have worked (especially the current) and we're all wasting money because of it.

So, while Web 2.0 is an example, I can name 100 other issues that are not Web 2.0 that are priority that they also will not support -- and it has nothing to do with those that work in IT not accepting the "fads" that others will.

Re:And why they shouldnt bar it ?

[polaris878]

You hit the nail on the head. I'm a junior web programmer for a major university and we considered re-writing many of our applications to have a more Ajax/Web 2.0 feel. We attended an Ajax conference hosted by our university which our programming team attended. One of the senior programmers asked the presenter how to migrate to Ajax techniques without losing accessibility or security. The response? Ajax is virtually worthless with JavaScript disabled. So the only way to achieve accessibility is to have our pages branch to Ajax versions and the accessible HTML version. No thanks. Not only is Ajax not accessible whatsoever, JavaScript has been the cause of many security holes [devarticles.com] [devarticles.com]. What does JavaScript really offer that can't be done more securely using PHP, Perl, ColdFusion, or some other server-side language? I applaud IT departments that are hesitant in starting/changing their web infrastructure using insecure, immature and inaccessible technologies.

Accessability

[jcdenhartog]

I work for a government organization, and I would have to say the biggest barrier to using many of these features is accessibility. There are huge challenges in making Web 2.0 accessible, which we are required to do.

There is definitely some complacency there as well, as well as a lack of 'customer service' attitude, but in the case of Web 2.0, why bother if it takes so much effort or is almost impossible to make it WCAG and Section 508 compliant.

Forget it

[Trailwalker]

One of several recent hacks at Pfizer [computerworlduk.com]

IT departments have learned caution the hard way.

and some companies are blocking all web 2.0

[josepha48]

it seems that some companies are starting to block web 2.0 sites because they use 'ActiveX' or 'untrusted' scripts.

So the company I am at just blocked a large online free web mail application, because of 'ActiveX', which is used by IE for AJAX.

They also block, youtube, myspace, flicker, and several other site, and anything that comtains music or video. It is beginning to suck working here.

Re:Too bad!

[xnt_hehe]

You fail to see the distinction between:
1 - A company that SELL WEB 2.0 "stuff"
2 - A company that wants to USE WEB2.0 "stuff" to increase profits.
If your company does #1 then DUN, go for it, sell sell sell the hype and profit. However, if your company is a consumer of WEB 2.0 "stuff" then your post is ridiculous.
"Web 2.0 has some security issues and it's not optimal, but for a lot of applications that either doesn't matter or a good IT group could work around it anyway."
I read: it will cost a lot of money to "work around it anyway" and, in the end, probably not be secure....but that doesn't matter as long as it look pretty,because that's what the end user wants. HOW does this help a company??

Re:Possible Explanation

[VENONA]

OK, you're having a experience. Zoom around in this thread, and you'll find plenty of folk with opinions from the opposite side of the fence. I've worked both sides, and my results have been mixed, but generally favorable toward IT. Like groups everywhere, there are good ones and bad ones.

But, be advised that that something like a simple DNS change (2 minute job) can actually take *forever*, depending upon policy. I once worked at a place with a trouble ticket system, and a managerial policy that allowed no deviations. Anything prioritized below the current level never happened. If your DNS change was Pri 3, it would never happen.

When I was new at the job, that sort of thing used to annoy me, and I'd take a few minutes out of lunch to fix whatever. Within a week, word had spread that I was a soft touch, and I had *no* lunch. When I started turning people away (at this point I couldn't even eat a sandwich in peace), I was the goat. My more experienced colleagues had been laughing all the while, as they knew exactly where it would lead.

The mess was eventually sorted by new management that wasn't quite so interested in slashing IT costs to the bone. We even got to buy some new servers which weren't pegged at all times, and a dependable backup system. It didn't turn into heaven on earth, but it turned into something workable. The average workweek even dropped from 60 hrs to 50hrs, which was a big deal, as everyone was salaried. We never could get even partial payment for beeper hours, though. And there were a lot of those.

Bottom line is that there will always be anecdotal horror stories on either side of this fence. You can work for the best company in the world, but if the couple of management layers above you suck, the job will suck.

Re:YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!!!

[JRHelgeson]

Flamebait? This is a direct quote from "A Few Good Admin's"

Ok, so I made it up...

My apologies to Col. Nathan Jessep [imdb.com].

Re:The other side

[Repossessed]

So basically, you're the perfect boss?

The great grandparent post the grandparent was responding to involved no 3rd party review though. You got a couple of them mixed up.

In my experience, issues with IT seem to reside in a single person, who is either not working at getting his staff to do their jobs right (or firing the right people, if necessary), or is actively interfering with it. Not always a PHB either.

In the particularly lovely case of the guy who heads our network (I dunno just how far up the chain this is), we have such lovely screw ups as updating Java without determining ahead of time if this would break the Java apps that the front line employees need in order to make money for the company (it did), and being too incompetent to realize that in a job that requires reading massive amount of online documentation (tech support), functions such as 'Open in new Window' are kind of essential, and should probably not be disabled. Then there's the lovely roll out we're getting in the next couple weeks, with IE7, once again, no prior indication if the tools that are specific to my floor's job will still work after this. Or for that matter, any other departments web 2.0 tools.