When cool tools get the cold shoulder

Nothing grieves me more than when a perfectly good technology, for whatever reason, becomes technica non grata.

The process I'm referring to usually follows this pattern: company X announces product Y that uses some cool new technology to allow users to do Z, which will make them perhaps happier and certainly more productive. Everyone just manages to get out a collective "Wow!" before the massed ranks of doom-mongers show how it will actually make your network into the worldís largest botnet in a matter of milliseconds, and so should be avoided with the worldís longest bargepole.

The technology is therefore immediately seized upon by consumers, who proceed to devise "innovative" ways in which it can be used, and it takes the world by storm. But it's never seen again in corporate environments until some vendor wraps it up with a new name and an eye-watering price tag, at which point it becomes the business flavour of the month and starts spawning expensive consultants.

The first stages of this process have happened to several of the most promising and useful technologies I've seen over the years - and which are some of the most successful in terms of dominating the world. Peer-to-peer (P2P) filesharing is perhaps one of the best examples, particularly in the form of the incredibly innovative BitTorrent. I remember when the likes of Intel and Microsoft were banging the gong for business P2P, only for those services to disappear without trace into the consumer world as P2P gained its technica non grata laurels.

BitTorrent is now in danger of reaching the final stage of the process, powering corporate content delivery services such as those offered by Solid State Networks.
FolderShare, a secure, business-oriented P2P app that yours truly praised when it appeared a few years ago, was bought up by Microsoft only to disappear into the innards of Live Messenger.

PC remote control and access is another sad story. Despite the technology progressing in leaps and bounds, many workers are unable to reap the benefits because of legitimate security worries. SMTP mail relays are another lost cause - it used to be so easy sending email from anywhere. Instant messaging has made the corporate transition but is still viewed with suspicion.

I'm sure there are many more examples, but a common thread is that the technology often ends up becoming "respectable" largely because of cultural and social pressures from users, not because of any particular improvements in the technology. And in my book, thatís no way for businesses to keep ahead of the curve.