Vendors Aim Products At Technically Adept End Users

IT isn't just business execs who know more about technology these days. Many end users are aware of what IT can do for them, especially the younger generation, who live and breathe Google and YouTube and are facile with Web 2.0 technologies like wikis and social networks. Vendors are starting to aim products directly at them.

Serena Software, which markets application development software, recently started selling a toolset called Business Mashups that's intended to encourage end users to create their own simple business apps. Consumers have been doing mashups for a while--for example, combining data sources such as Google Maps with a list of names in Microsoft Word to create quick apps, like a party invitation.

The software lets business users "connect applications and automate business processes--such as sales discount approvals--all without writing any code," Serena's Web site says.

End users are a logical place to move responsibility for at least some app dev chores, says Serena CEO Jeremy Burton, given their rising comfort level with software functionality and Web access, along with the increasing demands on resource-strapped IT organizations. But that means CIOs must adapt. "The next decade won't be about control," Burton says. "It will be about innovation without permission."

Tableau Software markets its data visualization tool to tech-savvy end users. It's a "light, fast" application in a market dominated by complicated and expensive business intelligence tools, says Christian Chabot, Tableau's CEO and co-founder. A test version of the product is available for free on the company's Web site. What Tableau hopes is that business users download it, use it, then take the results to IT to show how effective the tool is. "CIOs don't need to be the bottleneck on technology decisions anymore," Chabot says.

Something like that happened at Jabil Circuit, a multibillion-dollar electronics manufacturer. CIO David Couch says he saw a blurb about Tableau in a magazine at the same time one of his engineers found it online. Intrigued, they brought the product in-house, tested it, and used it to iron out a flaw in one of the company's manufacturing processes.

That scenario fits with Jabil's "bottom-up culture," Couch says. Still, he says, the company's engineers aren't free to download and use any tool they find on the Web: "We're not a cowboy organization."

Return to the story:
Don't Let Tech-Savvy Business Execs Do An End Run Around IT