4 Reasons Naysayers Win IT Battles, Not Wars

3. Another common issue is that small and midsize business and enterprise users will see something as OK for use by consumers--and/or maybe their "propeller-head" departments--but not for "real" computing. Unfortunately for the naysayers, however, the real value demonstrated by these rogue users shows what's actually possible; the proverbial cat is out of the bag. It's why, for instance, developers are using their corporate credit cards to access cloud systems, and in doing so they're applying pressure on traditional IT departments to adopt similarly flexible and economic solutions.

To give another example, many years ago, when Yahoo's instant messaging (IM) first launched, it was so much an amateur solution that system maintenance was scheduled between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., since it was assumed no one would be using it then. Yet IM is now a mission-critical app for some operations (including some trading floors). The consumer versions of things get proven and drive change in IT. How often, for example, do you have real problems with your personal email system--Hotmail or Gmail perhaps--compared to the corporate Exchange system?