IT Support as Wile E Coyote

At work we have a very well-intentioned IT applications development group. They keep trying to develop applications for the workforce. Unfortunately, they are stuck in the 1990s. Their solutions all revolve around closed, integrated products like Oracle. Meanwhile, we have another, smaller group that provides us single-purpose web applications like Movable Type blogs and a simple web server to which we can ftp files. The Oracle systems must go through rigorous specifications, trial groups, test periods, analysis and discussion. Meetings upon meetings are held as we ponderously ponder our future IT needs. Meanwhile, the blogs and the filespace and all of the attendant commercially-available products are taking off. Users are constantly finding creative, new ways to be productive with them.

The end result is that our IT applications development group is like Wile E Coyote in the old Warner Brothers cartoons. They create elaborate systems for fulfilling customer needs and end up getting flattened by the speeding Web 2.0 capabilities. Sort of like this.