The Black Wire and the White Wire

Chris Anderson with a message to corporate CIO's:

On my desk at work I have two ethernet cables. One is black and one is white. The black one is connected to our corporate network. I use that one when I want to print things. I could also use it for Internet access and stuff, but I don't because the corporate network blocks a number of ports, including those used for Skype and Second Life. It's also pretty slow.

The white cable, meanwhile, is a standard consumer-grade DSL connection to the Internet, with nothing blocked at all. Our local IT staff installed it by popular demand, possibly without checking with headquarters (we love our local IT staff!). It's fast. I use it all the time.

These two cables are a handy metaphor for the two worlds of corporate computing: end users and the IT department. The chasm between them has never been greater, in part because the tools available on the wide open web have never been better.

...

The technology world inside companies shouldn't be users vs IT, innovation vs. operations. But the main reason that it so often is, that they're so often in direct conflict, is the dependence on shared infrastructure for everything.

Hence my two cables--in a sense, my computing ego and id. Scratch most companies and their employees and you'll find the same. So why not build IT infrastructure that reflects the reality that one size doesn't fit all? To encourage experimentation at the edge while protecting operations in the core, two networks work better than one.

Read the whole thing.

I spent 4-years working as a project manager for the development of an internet-based data gathering system for power plants. Not only did we constantly run into these kinds of issues on a very regular basis, but it was compounded by having to get authorization from our corporate headquarters and IT staff in Japan. Trust me, using two wires is a much better option than constantly getting them crossed.