The web is from Venus, the corporation from Mars.
Monday, August 3rd, 2009OK I stole the title, but it neatly sums up the communication problems that appear to plague any attempt to more the corporate world to the web. Fundamentally this issue comes down to one question.
Who control what happens, and why?
In the world of the web i.e. designers, developers, start-ups etc. The one using the application is paying the bills, I choose to use facebook and twitter, but not MySpace. However the corporate world is anything but that. Their your told (for the most part) what app to use, someone has picked the office package you use, the account package or the web browser, you may not like it, but you can choose. This leads, when the corporate world and web world collide, the web world to make unjustified assumptions about the corporate world. Surely you will use our brand X, it’s much better and cheaper than your current brand Y. Which of course it is, however the people we talk to tend not to be the right people to talk to, we talk to who we think has the power, the end-user.
MicroSoft figured this out sometime ago. They didn’t sell the best operating system, but they sold it to the right people.
Vs.
Which a consumer would you buy? Now as a manager, yep sorry, it true, Steve Ballmer wins every time. Why because look at all the wonderful thing you can get for free, even a program called “Terminal” (Did anyone ever use that for anything?). And what more your companies on a budget, and Windows is only $99. If your not a techie manager (and most arn’t and don’t care. Get used to that fact) then why would you choose anything other than windows?
Now fast forward a few years, to 2009, and two campaigns organized by the web world. The first is death to IE6 and the other is Google’s attempt to place it’s self as the new PIM, it’s Going Google campaing.
First Death to IE6.
The site it’s self asks you to install some code on your site re-directing users, or warning them at least, that IE6 is a rubbish browser, and they need t upgrade to use the site. It sounds reasonably, IE6 is a flawed browser and has a number of security holes that will never be fixed.
The most strict version of the warning displays the following dialog box and redirects the user to a web page asking them to upgrade their browser,
| Hi! It looks like you’re using Internet Explorer 6 or lower, this is very bad :( and (this site) no longer supports it. We’re sending you to a page to help you install a better browser. Please come back to (this site) on a better browser! |
This of course works well for your average home user, however most users of IE6 are stuck on corporate machines, so place yourself in the shoes of a non-techie (yes again most are, learn to deal with it), who see this message and is then re-directed to a site asking them to do what they can’t do, i.e. upgrade their browser.
thankful most people are coming to terms with the fact that this tactic doesn’t work with the users who use IE6, and are stuck in the corporate world. However a new tactic has developed which is just as useless in the world of the corporation, and highlights the problem web people have with understanding the needs of the corporate world, and that is the “Hay IT” which has the same problems as the other bad example, Going Google.
The problem with both Hay IT and Going Google is, yet again, the web world doesn’t quite understand how the corporate world thinks. Both campings ask users to put pressure on the people making the decisions to change their way of working. However all thats likely to happen is both campings will see annoyed IT staff (who don’t have a say in what browser or PIM a company uses) react badly against both the products and those up-start users who presume to tell people how to do their job’s
In other words it’s likely to have a negative effect
However all is not bad for Google, their new software, I think by accident, said the magic words every sysadmin and corporate world IT guy loves to here. It was said by Stephani at the 09′ IO conference.
At one hour ten minutes, the magic phrase “If Peter and Milton made a privet reply that wave would never leave acme’s server closet.” was said. This may seam to the web world a small thing but the fact a business can own that the information, and ensure that data doesn’t leak out of their company, data which could lead to law suite etc. Is whats going to make Google wave a credible alternative to e-mail for the corporate world.