Prisoners of Legacy

Yes, we have an excuse: Our huge IT legacy creates lots of requirements that these small, cheap, innovative gadgets can't fulfill. To support them, we'd have to rethink our approaches to security, usability, storage, networking -- practically everything in IT.

But our excuse is no longer enough. It's time to start that rethinking.

We're now at the point where the most innovative technology for users really is being created in the nonbusiness space. Corporate IT has become the prisoner of legacy technology, and the result isn't just stodginess -- we're missing out on innovation that could make our users more productive, more effective and more successful.

When that happens, we're failing at our job.

If you want a rallying cry for the new year, here's one: None of our users should have to make do with tech that's second-rate compared with what an impoverished third-world child gets.