Somewhere around the fifth grade we learned that oil and water do not mix. I was reminded of this lesson not long ago when my daughters did the experiment that we all probably did in grade school. They put oil and water in a glass beaker and stirred them up – and then watched them separate. Anyone who has introduced water into engine oil, via a blown head gasket on an old engine for example, also knows that with enough heat, pressure, and agitation: oil and water can be whipped into a grey goo that takes some time to separate. Of course the lesson from grade five still stands and the oil and water do separate eventually, but it takes longer than you might think. With constant heat, pressure and agitation the two incompatible substances can be mixed.
Thanks to Steve Jobs, this same thing is happening right now in technology marketing. The incompatible substances are the consumer buyer of technology and the enterprise buyer of technology and the mobile device is the heat, pressure and agitation. Consumers are bringing mobile devices into the enterprise and disrupting the computing environment significantly.
Here are some of the differences between Consumer and Enterprise technology buying:
We are currently conducting a One Question Survey of IT decision makers and asking them: What one technology product changed your business computing the most in 2010? The number one answer so far is the iPhone. I thought it would be up there, but I did not think it would be number one. Number two is VMware’s virtualization suite.
The survey is still ongoing – so if you want to weigh in on this matter you can do so here. It will only take one minute to fill out the one question survey.
We will be announcing the final results at our RetroDex events on November 16th. You can learn more about RetroDex here.