Goodbye B2C, Hello C2B

The growing integration of technology into every aspect of life - home, office, home office, family, car and recreation - will profoundly impact business technology over the next decade, Gartner said recently. Speaking at the company's annual
Symposium/ITxpo in Cannes, analysts predicted that the control of technology will shift from corporations to individuals,
'consumerizing' business IT and creating an entirely new consumer to business (C2B) as well as business to consumer (B2C) marketplace. 

"What was once a straightforward two way relationship between business and technology has suddenly become complicated by the arrival of a third party - the consumer," said Steve Prentice, VP and Chief of Research at
Gartner. "Now that the dynamics have changed, the enterprise will struggle to dictate how employees and customers use technology. Products will increasingly be designed for consumers and IT professionals will just have to work out how to use them within the organization!"

According to Gartner, several major social trends - including new working practices, expectations of instant response and greater personalization - are already having a significant impact on the technology markets, as consumers look to technology to improve choice and lifestyle flexibility. Providers of consumer technologies have been quick to capitalize on this desire as the rapid growth in household broadband connections and proliferation of mobile devices illustrates. Gartner has found that for every one mobile device sold worldwide mainly for business use, more than 20 are sold mainly for consumer use. 

However, bound by the chains of legacy systems, flat budgets and risk-averse management, enterprise IT has not kept up with the pace of change in consumer markets, and is steadily falling further behind. "Current corporate applications simply cannot compete with the consumer experience and consequent user expectations. The technology used at home is so sophisticated that it outstrips the vast majority of commercial offerings," said Prentice. "As home and office environments continue to merge, the knowledge worker of the future will demand the same level of functionality and flexibility in the workplace that they have got used to at home. When those demands are not met by the enterprise, history shows us that they will find the technologies and tools needed themselves in the consumer market."

Technologies such as WiFi, 'smart' mobile phones, instant messaging, personal electronic devices, the Internet and even the PC itself, as well as consumer software like Google Desktop and
Skype, have steadily infiltrated the enterprise, introduced by technophile employees from their experiences as consumers. These technologies have had an impact on every layer of the enterprise infrastructure, in some cases revolutionizing the way businesses operate. 

"Ignoring the social context of technology is a recipe for business failure. If organizations continue to dictate what technologies their employees can and cannot use then they risk ignoring innovations that represent significant opportunities in the future, such as 3D graphics, rich media and consumer-oriented websites as platforms," said Mr Prentice. Furthermore, consumer technologies will provide the opportunity to streamline overweight IT systems and build towards lower-cost, leaner, more agile IT infrastructures.

Prentice also acknowledged the huge role played by the Internet and particularly what many are calling 'Web 2.0' in the progression of the consumerization of IT. "The widening use of new consumer technologies by employees within the enterprise is creating a second Internet revolution whereby the Internet will move into the very fabric of the business rather than continuing its current existence as a supporting technology," he said. "The first Internet revolution was largely focused on the consumer and got people accustomed to using the Internet for relatively mundane and simple activities. Now commercial companies are embedding Internet applications into their IT and business make-up."

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