The New Aristocracy

The workplace is an interesting study for psychologists. It has many types of interactions and many types of stratifications of employees. The divisions are always based on rank; the demonstrations of rank are varied.

I worked in one companyin which rank was indicated by the type, size, and location of one's workspace. Managers were assigned offices (with doors and solid walls), senior technical people were assigned cubicles next to windows, junior technical employees were assigned cubicles without windows, and contract workers were "doubled up" in windowless cubicles.

In another company, managers were issued color monitors and non-managers were issued (cheaper) monochrome monitors.

We excel at status symbols.

The arrival of tablets (and tablet apps) gives us a new status symbol. It allows us to divide workers into those who work with keyboards and those who work without keyboards. The "new aristocracy" will be, of course, those who work without keyboards. They will be issued tablets, while the "proletariat" will continue to work with keyboards.

I don't expect that this division will occur immediately. Tablets are quite different from desktop PCs and the apps for tablets must be different from desktop apps. It will take time to adapt our current applications to the tablet.

Despite their differences, tablets are -- so far -- much better at consuming information, while PCs are better at composing information. Managers who use information to make decisions will be able to function with tablets, while employees who must prepare the information will continue to do that work on PCs.

I expect that the next big push for tablet applications will be those applications used by managers: project planning software, calendars, dashboards, and document viewers.

The new aristocracy in the office will be those who use tablets.

The collision between BYOD and enterprise

There is a conflict looming in the business world. A new meme is rising to challenge the concept of enterprise software.

That meme is "Bring Your Own Device" (BYOD).

First, a short discussion of enterprise software. What, exactly, is "enterprise software".

It can be hard to define enterprise software. What is it about a specific application that makes it an "enterprise" application? Is it simply the applications used in business (like Microsoft Word and Excel)? Is it the ability to integrate with Microsoft's Active Directory? Is it an expensive support contract?

Here's my definition: Enterprise software is selected by one person and used by another. In most (if not all) large organizations (business, non-profit, and government) someone, perhaps a committee of someones, selects the "standard software" used within the organization. The chosen software is then foisted upon the troops, who must use the specified software or face the wrath of the standards committee, senior managers, and the Human Resources department.

Companies have reasons to standardize software. The reasons are varied, yet generally devolve into one of these:

• Common data formats to exchange information
• The company can buy licenses at a discount
• Support teams can reduce costs by focusing on a limited set of software
• People can easily move from one project to another

These are all valid reasons of a company to standardize on software.

But look at what happens in the new world of "Bring Your Own Devices" (with the implication of bringing your own software):

• The employee is buying the license, not the company. No volume discounts!
• The employee supports himself (or herself). No support team needed!

The advantage of "Bring Your Own Device (and software)" to the company is that the cost of acquisition and maintenance shifts to the employee. Yes, companies will claim that they implement BYOD(S) to improve workforce morale, but really the accountants have looked at the numbers and blessed the decision based on the reduction of expenses.

Once a company implements BYOD(S), the justifications for standardized software become:

• Common data formats to exchange information
• People can easily move from one project to another

The former has some merit, but is weak. In the days of Wordstar, WordPerfect, and MS-Word (three word processors with very different data formats) the ability to exchange information across products was limited. Today's word processors (and spreadsheets, and even virtualization managers) have moved to common, open formats.

Which leaves the only reason to enforce standard software is to move people from one project to another. That argument is difficult, given that employees, assigned to any project, will own their devices and software. They still pick the software for their device!

So there you have it. The BYOD(S) movement, which forces people to purchase their own hardware and software, also moves us away from enterprise software.

* * * * *

Of course, the situation is not that simple. The logic works for my definition of enterprise software, which was simplistic. Enterprise software is selected by someone and used by another, but it is much more. Enterprise software is designed for collaboration among employees, with common data and often restrictions on visibility and operations upon that data, based on user identity.

The significant enterprise systems (ERP systems, calendaring, and the legacy accounting systems) will remain enterprise systems. Employees will use apps to access them, from tablets or smartphones or even PCs.

The other "enterprise systems", the desktop apps that standards committees often argue about, will, on the other hand, evaporate into the realm of employee-owned devices. Word processors, spreadsheets, presentation software, and many other applications will cease to be a worry of the standards committees. Instead, the standards committees will worry about data formats and storage locations.

BYOD is about file formats, not software

We tend to think about BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) as freeing the company from expensive software, and freeing employees to select the device and software that works best for them. Individuals can use desktop PCs, laptops, tablets, or smartphones. They can use Microsoft Office or LibreOffice -- or some other tool that lets them exchange files with the team.

One aspect that has been given little thought is upgrades.

Software changes over time. Vendors release new versions. (So do open source projects.)

An obvious question is: How does an organization coordinate changes to new versions?

But the question is not about software.

The real question is: How does an organization coordinate changes to file formats?

Traditional (that is, non-BYOD) shops distribute software to employees. The company buys software licenses and deploys it. Large companies have teams dedicated to this task. In general, everyone has the same version of software. Software is selected by a standards committee, or the office administrator. The file formats "come along for the ride".

With BYOD, the organization must pick the file formats and the employees pick the software.

An organization needs agreement for the exchange of documents. There must be agreement for the project files for development teams. (Microsoft Visual Studio has one format, the Eclipse IDE has another.) A single individual cannot enforce their choice upon the organization.

For an organization that supports BYOD, think about the formats of information. That standards committee that has nothing to do now that BYOD has been implemented? Assign them the task of file format standardization.