Of all the reasons why corporate IS managers are keen on putting in intranets, which do you suppose is top of their list? Would it be because they believe it might save their employer some money? Perhaps because it enables them to provide a better service to users? Or might it be to gain the organisation additional competitive edge in a connected world?
Of course it would be absurdly out of character if it were any of the above. There is one solitary, self-serving reason why IS managers have fallen head over heels in love with the intranet model. They believe it gives them the wherewithal to regain control of their organisation's information systems.
In an intranet, Web servers provide a central access point through which users can look up, analyse and update information. It doesn't matter whether that information originates on a mainframe, a minicomputer or a humble PC. Whatever system is sitting on the user's desk, he or she can access all of it through the single, easy to use medium of the Web browser. At a stroke, it increases ease of access to information while reducing overheads like training, maintenance and development.
These are all good reasons in themselves for adopting intranets, and IS managers will be at pains to explain them to their boards and their non-IT peers as they seek to sell the intranet concept. But the real, hidden reason for their messianic ardour is that they long to be in charge again.
Golden dreamworld
Poor, misguided souls, they are convinced that once the intranet comes to its full fruition, they will have total control of an organisation's information systems. They dream of sweeping away the ranks of desktop PCs, departmental servers and client-server networks that have sprouted up like virulent weeds and overrun their fiefdoms. In their place they foresee giant parallel computing monsters from which they will dripfeed information and applications to a grateful user populace armed with nothing more threatening than a simple Web browser.
This dreamworld harks back to an age that never existed, the golden age of the datacentre. Then they were the revered guardians of a sacred inner sanctum, able to dictate the applications available to users, to protect and manage the information they guarded, and to hatch grandiose plans that promised to solve all their employer's business problems.
Despite all their efforts, the golden age never arrived, because users were never happy with what they could offer. Distributed computing gradually undermined the power of the IS manager as users increasingly took matters into their own hands. The intranet model appears to resolve this conflict by providing the flexibility and versatility that users demand, while seating it on servers that sit within the fortifications of the IS department's castle.
IS managers are blind to the anachronism of attempting to foist such a feudal, command-economy model on the radically liberal framework of the Web. Their habits and traditions prevent them from seeing that it cannot possibly work.
Corporate IT — as the name implies — grew up in the heyday of corporatism. It is a relic of the days when machines had to be big to be economic, and when mass production required giant organisations with central control and a management hierarchy of almost military proportions to run them. The mainframe was the apotheosis of this mentality, applying assembly line principles to numbers and data.
Corporatism put the needs of the organisation first. It was the only way to manage such vast enterprises and machines. A corporate bureaucracy developed whose only role was to keep the wheels of the organisation turning, and corporate IS grew up in its ranks.
Decentralising power
Today, information technology makes it possible to reengineer corporations so that, instead of putting their own internal needs first, they can focus on what their customers want instead. Yet while computing provides the modern technology which makes this possible, those who manage it retain many of the habits associated with the corporatist past that gave it birth. Software is still largely written according the principle that users must adapt their way of working to the structural requirements of the program. And IS managers believe their systems and procedures take precedence over the interests of the users they serve.
Their obstinately tunnel-visioned thinking is so blinkered that they believe users will be grateful when, under the guise of the intranet, they remove control of applications and information back to the centre. Neither are they able to perceive the trap they are falling into. For by adopting the intranet model they will be inviting a Trojan horse into their citadels, nurturing an invader that will ultimately dismantle their powerbase stone by stone.
Distributed computing obeys a fundamentally different philosophy from the old corporatist one. It emphasises individuality over conformity, participation in place of subordination, collaboration rather than control. It undermines hierarchical fiefdoms by encouraging modern business practices like business unit autonomy, interdepartmental project teams and third party alliances. And it gives users the means to revolt against any attempt to restrict their freedom.
Installing intranets decentralises power by the simple mechanism of making Web access easy for every user. IS managers believe they will win control by owning the Web servers. But as soon as those Web servers fail to live up to users' expectations, they will turn elsewhere to gain the facilities they need — either to homegrown servers or to others provided by third parties. The universality of Web technology will give them far greater choice than they ever had when the only alternative to corporate IT was buying their own PC.
When this comes to pass, outmanoeuvered IS managers will complain bitterly from the sidelines as their grasp on power slips even further away. When users link up with Web servers hosted by internet service providers, suppliers and customers — or even competitors — to find the applications and information they need to work with their own company's data, IS managers will decry their actions as anarchy and subversion.
But anarchy and subversion is here to stay. Perhaps they would be better advised to start thinking now about how to make it work instead of trying to hold back an unstoppable tide by clinging to their corporatist past.
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