The OEM believes that IT departments are “becoming obsolete”.
Networkworld reported that Brother feels the average IT department will disappear due to cloud technology and mobile and software developments, as well as workers having the freedom to chose the online services and tools they want to work with. The article by Brother in The Telegraph asked “does the cloud and mobile era mean we can do away with the IT department completely?”, and answered that “to a large extent, the answer is yes.”
The Japanese OEM is promoting its own MPS that “promises to rein in printing spending for organisations through pay-for-what-you-print”. Despite this, the company makes an interesting argument saying that teams in IT offices used to upgrade software and often decided which computers and equipment should be bought, but now “firms instead rely on online services, and employees choose the devices they want to work on”.
The article noted that Brother declined to mention that cloud services are not fool-proof, and that recent security holes were discovered by Elastica and Blue Coat in studies that showed the storing of documents by employees were in “chosen cloud services” called Shadow IT, and that these were detected on Google searches in some cases.
However, the cloud offers “convenience to workers”, the article said, and because they are more in-the-know about technology they don’t think they need the advice of “tech experts”, and Brother says that technology “should no longer be locked away from the end user”. It was also noted that “IT isn’t driving major companywide directional changes – it’s the CEOs doing that”, and Brother added “technology is now so integral to every business across all sectors that anyone in a leadership role must act as chief information officer to their team or department, as part of their everyday remit”.