This week there was a piece written by the CIO of Fujitsu Americas titled Change is Coming and It's IT-Fueled. The subject is that our IT culture and workplaces are going to be changed in the future. the gist of the argument is that as more people freelance or contract, we will see remote work grow. This will present a challenge to traditional IT groups that expect everyone to be working in close proximity with the same equipment, under the same security domain, and more.

One of the primary reference data points in the article is that 34% of US workers engage in freelance work. There's a reference to a study that says 41million people engage in some sort of freelance work. Out of the 160million or so in the current US workforce, that's about 25-27%, but still a large number of freelancers. However I think this data skews the IT picture somewhat. While there are lots of IT consultants and freelancers for small projects, I'm not sure I think working offsite will be the norm for most departments. There may be someone that does so, but it seems plenty of companies still expect a sizeable presence of staff inside their walls. For example I freelance, but I'm not sure working on book projects in some way alters fundamental IT work in enterprises.

The other part of the article looks at the BYOD meaning not only Device, but perhaps Data Center. There's a mention of security being important as how we work with data may change, but the piece seems to devolve into a look at the Internet of Things for some reason. However the point that security will be number one is valid. I disagree that we'll see more and more people working offsite, but we will see a few people working offsite at more places, which does mean more security concerns. The weakness in a security system is the weakest point, not the average for all employees. Even if you have perfect security for all your employees, not handling one remote contractor properly can invalidate your security claims. Forgetting to upgrade one ASP site could put all the data behind your securely architected MVC sites at risk.

There will be challenges for many IT departments. There will be tensions as individuals seek more freedom and flexibility in their work. However I think this will be a minority of people for a simple reason. While there is a demand for employees, there is also a huge group of people that don't have the job flexibility of others. Perhaps they have location requirements, limited skillsets, or they just like their current job. They are willing to continue to work in an office, with current technologies. However most of us will be challenged to deal with new security issues as hacking attempts increase, older technology is found to be vulnerable, and the workload of keeping our systems running overwhelms our ability to fight battles about every new device. I predict that we'll see more issues in 2016 for a variety of reasons, and that many of us will need to balance the stress of security problems with the limited impact we can have. Strive forward, make things better where you can, and brush off the inevitable failures from applications you cannot control.