The consumerization of IT has become one of the rising trends and end users are increasingly becoming keen to get their hands right on latest in technology that they can leverage. Technological advancements, including mobile and predominantly cloud computing, are user-friendly and vendors are itching to provide their customers with what they are demanding.

However, for IT departments, managers and other virtuosos, consumerization comes with impediments. Simply put, it implies that IT managers have less control over their company's technology related decisions, but still they are held accountable for integration of latest in technologies - even when IT did not pick them. For midsize IT in particular, the way ahead may be in burgeoning toward a role of technology negotiator.

Do you know? These days, more and more CIOs, CFOs and COOs are opting for Do-It-Yourself. IT consumerization is putting IT departments in a tight spot, specifically in midsize companies. According to a survey conducted by Wakefield Research for Avanade, revealed that departments apart from IT are now accountable for more than 37% of technology lay out. 

Consumerization, and particularly the fast proliferation of public cloud hosting services, has been considered as key driver of this trend on the supply side by the industry pundits. Interestingly, simplified and consumerized cloud resources are now quickly accessible to business end users. Not only the supply side, it has been enormously impacting the demand side as well. 

End User Preferences vs. Varying Infrastructure Demands

The compelling challenge that midsize IT departments in particular come across is to work within the constrictions of defined resources, and most resources are dedicated to keeping the existing IT infrastructures up and running. According to there search, it has been established that IT personnel spend near about 36% of their overall time in the maintenance of systems. This means that IT managers and mavens have relatively less to spend working with business units to assist define their technology requirements and finding out the best measures to cater them. Consequently, these business units get tired of waiting and try to find out ways by themselves. 

Hence, midsize IT can achieve the desired results simply by embracing a two way approach: Keeping the indispensable infrastructure working while meeting the requirements of other departments like a vendor.

However, one good news for midsize IT is that the emergence of mobile and cloud server have been driving the self-service trend to a great extent. Above all, they are also assisting to lessen the underlying operational burdens on IT. 

As critical IT infrastructure functionalities become more and more obtainable through cloud services, midsize IT department can itself make use of these consumerized services to lessen the burdens of infrastructure maintenance, thereby enabling them to employ their resources on the avant-garde responsibility of helping other business units to cater their technology requirements.