🚀 go-pugleaf

mpiet@is.morgan.com (Mark Pietrasanta) asks:

> It would seem that business is more suited to a peer-to-peer
> environment, although IS typically isn't.  How do we IS'ers
> maintain our role (or any role) as the business units start to
> welcome the new peer philosophy?  Especially if they embrace
> Microsoft's solutions, which will mean they can support and
> develop with minimal man-hours and without IS?

Expecting end users to produce answers-oriented analysis applications
to benefit themselves or their immediate work group is a reasonable
thing.  The IS department writing monthly sales role-up reports is
probably a thing of the past, and any IS department that tries to
fight over this type of application is likely being foolish.

Expecting end users, or even department specialists, to write
applications that respect cross department information requirements
and obscure legislated auditing requirements is probably foolish.
These considerations don't help with getting the "job at hand" done,
they only may reduce problems in the future.  And the future could
very well be outside of the current budgetary cycle.  I suspect that
the role of IS will be concentrated here;  coordinating the corporate
information schema, dealing with what the government insists you be
able to produce, and coordinating information exchanges with outside
agencies (either governmental or companies you do business with).  For
example, an insurance company would probably want an IS department
designing and building the applications for remote independent
insurance agents so a single application handled the full spectrum of
claims and new account business handled by the independent agents.
Having the claims department, the auto insurance department, the
medical insurance department etc. all come up with their own
applications is probably expensive for the big company, and more so
for the poor independent agent who then has to deal with 16 different
incompatible applications, probably some running on different
hardware.  (If you have 6 departments involved, at least one will
probably "standardize" on the Mac...)

R Mark Chilenskas
Chilenskas@Office.wang.com