Gartner tells CIOs to get ready for 'Live'

Big implications for business

Chief information officers (CIOs) are being advised to take Microsoft's new 'Live' strategy and other emerging internet technologies very seriously.

Gartner software technology analyst David Smith says that the software giant's are all about extending Windows 'up into the clouds', appealing directly to individual users over the heads of company IT organisations.

'Long term, this has big implications, and not all of them obvious for business. It will change the way people interact with PCs, making them much more independent of one particular computer, allowing them to move around and make better ways of working than we have today,' he said.

Smith says that businesses need to prepare for what he calls the 'consumerisation of IT' caused by software like Windows Live.

'It is about the products and services used by consumers increasingly having an impact in the enterprise. Initially the Live services are not going to offer something that most IT organisations in companies find useful, but eventually they are going to be pushed by their own users into wider and wider adoption,' he said.

But there will be difficulties along the way.

Gartner's report predicts that firms will be wary of accepting software automatically downloaded from the internet, with IT departments uncomfortable about Microsoft assuming the role of their systems integrator.