PC Empowerment?

[tn3270]

One of the reasons PCs took off is the "empowerment of users": people can get their work done without having to wait on a centralized mainframe IT department to get things built, software installed, etc. My recent experiences make me wonder if we have really gotten there. I have now had a similar experience in 3 different customer trials of the new product I have developed for my company. It is a client/server product: the server part is a mainframe part, and the client is a fairly fat PC based client with a standard windows installer. In all three cases, getting the mainframe part installed was easy and often accomplished in a day or less.

However, these shops all have policies such that people cannot install software themselves on their PC workstations. With the mainframe part ready to go, people are unable to do anything because they are not allowed to do an install on their own PC, so they cannot install the client. They must wait days or weeks for someone to come and do installs. In two cases, there is a "PC Software Review Board" that must approve software installs. What is really sad is that the product is an interactive debugger, and these are senior application developers who are not allowed to do their own installs.

Comments

[cellio]

I find those sorts of policies frustrating, yes. About all the software world can do is to distribute clients that can run straight from CD (or thumb drives, but policy people sometimes ban those).

PCs can enpower users in ways that mainframes didn't, but policy always has the ability to get in the way. :-(