Tom Bishop and Dan Turchin - The Mobile IT Worker – They Walk, Talk, and Keep Businesses Running

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Mobility has two meanings, when you stop to think about it. There’s the mobile technology we’ve all come to appreciate, but there’s also the legs that you walk around on and the vehicles that workers use for business. Mobile devices such as cell phones are technology-based movement enablers, but what happens if you put a pedometer on an IT worker and measure their steps? How can IT work directly affect gas and energy expenditures? Find out in this interesting podcast with Dan Turchin, President of Aeroprise, and Tom Biship, CTO at BMC Software.

Dan and Tom have thought about mobility and share stories from their mobile lifestyles. As you might imagine, there are distinct, measurable connections between IT worker mobility and a businesses’ dependence on IT service desk and IT service availability around the clock. As the world flattens, making geography boundaries less meaningful, so does a clock’s ticking become less and less the focus of an IT department’s tasks.

They also discuss how the end of the exclusively-PC computing environment is near as the mobile-centric environment marches in. With a mobile phone knowing your calendar, your availability, and perhaps even your location, more context is available with mobile devices than a desktop computer. Is your mobile office simply your pocket and a Blackberry or iPhone? Or perhaps both a Blackberry AND an iPhone? Find out in this fun and future-forward podcast conversation.

Questions:

1. (IT workers seem to have the toughest schedules due to the 24/7 uptime required by many businesses.) Do IT workers already work from home, but unofficially so?
2. Do you think that scheduled server downtime due to upgrades means that IT workers never get to enjoy the holidays, because server downtime is often scheduled during business slow times? Or is that an oversimplification?
3. What mobile technologies enable a mobile workforce? What’s new in this area?
4. (When some people think of work-at-home arrangements, they imagine a computer desk in the kitchen or living room.) What does the most modern mobile office look like today, in your imagination?
5. (The city of Birmingham, Alabama in the US is going to a four-day work week, but continuing to have five-day-a-week service to the city.) Could you enable a shortened work week and still maintain quality IT services?
6. How much does the cost of fuel and energy directly affect an IT department? Let’s talk about movement towards energy-conserving green IT.

What did you think of this podcast? What it helpful? We want to know what you think so send a note today to talkbmc@bmc.com