Now that I'm working at a big company (NEC is one of the largest computer manufacturers on earth with more than 100,000 employees) I find I'm starting to behave like a big-company employee.
My brother is an IT guy who works for a variety of companies too.
What do big-company corporate IT departments want? Control.
Now, let's visit Bill Gates, er Microsoft's board of directors and stockholders. What do they want? Growth.
How does Gates and Co. grow? By giving IT departments products to buy (and upgrade).
That pressure is what drives all sorts of people to do all sorts of things.
Enron and WorldCom decided to break the rules to satisfy their stockholders.
What does Gates do? He goes to his biggest customers and asks "how can I get you to upgrade Windows and Office?"
What do you think your corporate IT department says to Microsoft when they come calling? I can just imagine it goes something like this:
1) "We want the ability to know what our employees are doing with our computers."
2) "We want to know who they sent email to (even if it's on a Hotmail site)."
3) "We want to know what files they send via Instant Messaging."
4) "We want to know what Web sites they both looked at and published to."
5) "We want to be able to search any employees' hard drive for any piece of information and get it fast."
Why do they want to do this? Because they are paying us to do work and they want to make sure they are getting what they paid us to do. Corporate managers hate it when employees send their corporate memos to FuckedCompany.com.
Not to mention outright corporate theft -- I know from personal experience that some people steal from their companies (I caught an employee stealing from the camera store I used to manage).
They know that some percentage of their employees do a lot of surfing of porn sites. Xerox fired several a few years back.
They know that some percentage of their employees are posting resumes on Monster.com or Craigslist while at work.
They know that some percentage of their employees are committing crimes at work (hey, did you miss that there were two pilots recently caught for "drunk flying?")
Companies want the power to watch us at work. (Not to mention that government wants the ability to watch us at all times).
Most of Microsoft's money comes from companies who buy thousands of licenses of Windows and Office at one time.
Microsoft now exists wholly to serve its stockholders and board of directors (Bill Gates has been selling off his shares to other people, which means he has less and less control over where Microsoft is going).
I remember a Microsoft executive who told me at about 1993 that Microsoft's challenge is to grow the size of Lotus (Lotus was quite large back then) every year.
Think about that. How does Microsoft grow its size? Certainly not by listening to Robert Scoble.
It does it by visiting Boeing, GM, EDS, the U.S. Government, and various other big Fortune 1000 companies and organizations.
Now you know where the pressure for Palladium is coming. [Scobleizer Radio Weblog]
4:37:46 PM 
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