“How the Cloud Changes the Way Employees Expect to Work” is now on WIRED

by Nathan W. Burke on October 19, 2012

My article “How the Cloud Changes the Way Employees Expect to Work” is now on WIRED.

From the post:

We’re in the middle of a fundamental change in the way people work.

The Old Way of Working

If you’re not right out of college and have had an office job for a while, you’re probably familiar with the following process when starting a new job:

  1. Sign a bunch of forms so you can get paid
  2. Read through a giant company policy packet to all the things you can’t do
  3. Have someone show you the applications that are available to yo see u to do your job
  4. Get training on how to use the apps

You were expected to adapt the way you work to the company’s processes. If you were used to Lotus Notes and the new employer used Microsoft Exchange, you had to adapt the way you work to fit within the company-approved policies and applications.

In fact, companies had something called an Approved Application Policy, which listed all corporate sanctioned applications that employees were allowed to use to accomplish tasks. If an employee wanted to use software not listed in the policy, they would follow a process to ask for permission to have an app added to the policy. If IT deemed it necessary, they would add the application. If not, using an unsanctioned app could lead to termination. Though it seems like a quaint, time-consuming process, this is how IT could ensure that only vetted applications could access corporate data.

The New Way of Working

Now, with trends like Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), employees expect to be able to access their data and apps from any device, any time, without constantly asking for approval. Workers expect to be able to wake up and check email from their own laptop or tablet, edit documents on their smart phones on the way to the office, and access the same data and apps on their employer-owned computers. The notion of being only able to work from the office is seen as ridiculous, and cripples productivity.
Read more: http://insights.wired.com/profiles/blogs/how-the-cloud-changes-the-way-employees-expect-to-work#ixzz2Ba15Wwcx

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