Everyone’s an IT Pro.

Hello world.

Finally.

I’m IT PRO’s newest staff member, having joined the title a few weeks ago as Technology Editor. Now I’m settled in, I’ve managed to get both get my staff blog account set up and actually get round to writing something, so here, without further ado, is my first post.

One of the things I am enjoying about my new role is that I now take the train, instead of having to drive, which I had to for my previous job. IT PRO is part of Dennis Publishing, which I used to work for in the late 90s, so it’s been several years since I took this train journey regularly.

Looking round the carriage, I’ve been struck by one particular marked change between my journey now, and that of yesteryear. Almost everyone on the train it seems is using technology to some degree. While most commuters had mobiles for years, they used to be just for calls or texts. Now, even the regular punters are doing relatively sophisticated things with their gadgets – whether it be checking emails, scrolling through massive music collections or watching video.

Compared to five or six years ago then, everyone’s an IT Pro. I think it was Gartner who described it as the, ‘consumerisation of IT’.

What’s significant is that all of these devices are coming into the office environment, many of them capable of hooking up to the corporate network, either physically via USB, or over Wi-Fi. The problem is that this creates headaches for IT managers, who have to worry about security or in some way have to end up supporting these devices. It creates more work and more opportunities for security breaches.

On the upside, this business presence can have a positive effect – such as improving a consumer device, due to business needs. Yes, I mean the iPhone. Being so whizzy, countless executives have picked them up, only to find out that they can’t use it to pick up their corporate email. Fortunately, this is a situation that the release of the SDK will solve. By the time the 3G iPhone comes out and with support for push email and Microsoft Exchange in place, it should be the best phone for both consumers and business users by a county mile.

It’s interesting how Apple concentrated on releasing the iPhone as a consumer device first and then has focussed on business needs. This is the opposite of the approach of Blackberry and Palm, which has taken their business centric devices and tried to ‘consumerise’ them.

The results are the Blackberry Pearl and the Palm Centro – both adequate in their own way, but a long way from an iPhone.