There is a great deal of excitement surrounding mobile devices like the iPhone and the new Android-based phones. One of the most common questions I seem to be getting these days is “Can I connect my iPhone/Droid/Pre/Blackberry to my mail server?” I’m not going to go into the virtues of the various mobile technologies. However, it brings to mind what I see as a common cycle. Technology goes from being laughed at, poked and prodded, grudgingly accepted to, finally, indispensible.

Let’s take email. Twenty short years ago the only people using email were academics and some brave consumers. Remember when CompuServe ruled the world and AOL was an upstart? You had entirely user-friendly email addresses like 12345.12@compuserve.com? Today, there isn’t an enterprise around that doesn’t rely on email to operate on a daily basis.

My pivotal email moment came a few short years ago. When I was out of the office during the day I would usually carry around my laptop so I could keep in touch – check email, instant message my staff. One day I came back to my office after a day of meetings and was confronted by partner:

“Didn’t you get my email??!?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I didn’t bring my laptop with me today…”
“You’re getting a Blackberry!”

It was at that moment that, for our business, constant access to email became a business necessity. We went ahead and implemented an email strategy to meet this need. However, we avoided a major technology pitfall. It’s what I like to call technology sprawl.

For many companies this is an all-too-common occurrence: technology is deployed out of necessity (the CEO has to have an iPhone) without regard to standards and supportability. Before you allow expanded access to that nifty application you have running in your test lab you need to stop and consider the greater impact on your environment. Otherwise, before you can say “hard disk failure”, you have a “production” system down, with no redundancy or recovery strategy.

It is true new technology breeds greater productivity but this leads to greater risk when the technology fails. Technology vendors will continue to tempt us with new technology that promises even greater productivity. The lesson for IT managers is to strive to maintain order amid the chaos.

Have an interesting technology sprawl story? I’d love to hear it…