Making a Positive Impression

Spurring this convergence of corporate and consumer technology is the fact that the line between personal lives and work has blurred.

Kendall Whitehouse, senior director of IT at Wharton, notes that employees often perform personal tasks -- like watching the latest popular video on YouTube or shopping at Amazon.com -- at work and they frequently complete corporate tasks at home on their own time. Because those work-home lines have blurred, employees have an increasing say over what technologies they use. "The enterprise is no longer the only provider of technology services. People quickly adopt what's easiest and most convenient," says Whitehouse. And that often means using free online services such as Google Maps, Yahoo Finance or Microsoft's Windows Live email.

Marketing professor Peter Fader agrees. "The IBMs and Oracles are just reacting to changes in consumer behavior," he notes. "Social media -- sharing information like a consumer does on Facebook or MySpace -- has become an important feature. It's part of the evolution."

For technology companies, this emerging consumerization trend represents an opportunity. On March 6, Jobs announced plans to make its iPhone more corporate friendly. A new software update will allow the iPhone to more seamlessly connect to Microsoft Exchange corporate email systems and give Apple's popular device more security features to prevent data from being lost or stolen.

Apple's strategy: Hope consumers bring iPhones to work and request that their companies support the devices. Once the iPhone is established, the company may be more inclined to adopt a few of Apple's Mac computers, too. Andy Hargreaves, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities, said in a research note that the "iPhone will likely be the first Apple device for millions of corporate users, and positive impressions could drive stronger demand for Macs."

Fader calls Apple's approach a "skim and penetrate strategy" in which Apple "skims" a group of early consumer adopters -- say CEOs enamored of a new gadget -- and later hopes that these adopters will evangelize the product and help it reach broader adoption.