What's the Difference Between IT Business Users and IT Consumer Users?

  Not much. Especially as business adopts more consumer-type applications of IT.

The most common example? Google. Many business users say their corporate search engines are fairly lame, so they fire up google.com to locate an executive bio or information about a recent product announcement located on their own site. I find the press rooms of most sites so badly done, that I turn to Google for sheer efficiency.

Half the business users I talked to (in my informal survey) said they used google's commercial web site to locate information on their corporate web site, even though their IT department had a licensed google appliance or some other search engine.

IT consumerization gains momentum
It's all part of the consumerization movement that's driving corporate IT - and corporate IT suppliers. Sit through any requirements session and you'll hear users cite consumer technology stories to illustrate what they want from business applications.

Hence, tech vendors with high recognition in the B2B space are investing in advertising channels typically associated with consumer marketing. In fact, they are doing this even if they don't sell directly to consumers.

It's not unlike Apple's early promotion to schools. Students ultimately become business managers with money to spend on themselves and their fellow employees.

"Sit through any requirements session and you'll hear users cite consumer technology stories to illustrate what they want from business applications."

Have our personal and professional lives become one?
Business and IT consumers of technology products have been morphing for years. You certainly don't switch cell phones to make personal calls - and you send plenty of personal emails from your business account. Our PDAs hold both business and personal information.

Check out the ads of leading technology vendors, especially television, and they make little or no distinction between your life as a business user and a consumer. In fact, Dell's ads reach out to you and your family as much as they reach out to you and your workgroup.

Everywhere you go, you see cross-channel marketing - and the lines are definitely blurring.

Next up: How IT brands perform in consumer awareness tests.