Google Chrome? Hold that thought.
First, let's say your organization has confidential data -- Social Security numbers, credit card transactions, customer sales information, anything like that. Would you rather keep it in your data center or have it sitting on a user's laptop?
That's easy: You want it safe in the data center. But that makes the data much less convenient to an employee who might have used it to analyze a trend, identify fraud or close a sale. It's a trade-off; to put that data to its best use, you might have to give up some control and entrust that user with the data.
Now what about this: Say you're going to hand over a critical chunk of your IT infrastructure to an outsider. Where do you draw the line? At turning over all IT operations to an outsourcer? At letting Salesforce.com own your sales force automation? At bringing in a consultant to run your online retail operation? At third-party Web hosting? At leased T1 network lines?
Chances are your comfort zone ends somewhere in the neighborhood of Salesforce. Software as a service still makes many IT people a little queasy. Will the advantages be worth having an outsider so involved in everything that your sales users do? Maybe -- but that requires a lot of trust, and it's not a decision that anyone in IT should make lightly.
More: http://www.pcworld.com/article/150804/article.html?tk=nl_dnxnws
First, let's say your organization has confidential data -- Social Security numbers, credit card transactions, customer sales information, anything like that. Would you rather keep it in your data center or have it sitting on a user's laptop?
That's easy: You want it safe in the data center. But that makes the data much less convenient to an employee who might have used it to analyze a trend, identify fraud or close a sale. It's a trade-off; to put that data to its best use, you might have to give up some control and entrust that user with the data.
Now what about this: Say you're going to hand over a critical chunk of your IT infrastructure to an outsider. Where do you draw the line? At turning over all IT operations to an outsourcer? At letting Salesforce.com own your sales force automation? At bringing in a consultant to run your online retail operation? At third-party Web hosting? At leased T1 network lines?
Chances are your comfort zone ends somewhere in the neighborhood of Salesforce. Software as a service still makes many IT people a little queasy. Will the advantages be worth having an outsider so involved in everything that your sales users do? Maybe -- but that requires a lot of trust, and it's not a decision that anyone in IT should make lightly.
More: http://www.pcworld.com/article/150804/article.html?tk=nl_dnxnws
