I think you're missing an important point, but I don't disagree completely.
The biggest problem is that this is a product DESIGNED to be placed in educational IT environments. As such, the product should either be designed to work in those environments with reasonable effort and without violating common security practices.
It's like marketing a car specifically to people with garages that are too small to fit the dimensions of the car. Either you make the car fit where it needs to go or you market it somewhere that fits. You DON'T market it to a demographic who can't reasonably use it. You're just making bad press for yourself.
And as a network IT guy myself we have a responsibility to maintain order on the networks we administer. Just because someone calls me down to their desk to install CCleaner on their laptop doesn't mean I'm obligated to do it. Infact I'm obligated to steer him in the right direction and make sure he understands the errors of his ways.
IT is the gatekeeper. You don't tell IT what to do... You tell them what you want to accomplish and let them tell you how to do it.
> As such, the product should either be designed to work in those environments with reasonable effort and without violating common security practices.
And I'm claiming that the effort required is reasonable, and it's thus not that big of a deal, even if slightly annoying in that it requires effort and doesn't just work. In the few environments I've worked in a sysadmin role, it wouldn't have been a problem to provide a one-off network that doesn't touch the official network if requested by a user, and in one it'd been completely fine if the user just set up an isolated AP as long as it didn't interfere with the official ones (university network)
The IT department is an enabler for the avarage user or the least common denominator, when we are talking about the monocultures of companies there is no room for niched solutions. The issue here is that location based computing is an feature that people need, but the official channels fight.
Companies hire IT departments to manage their IT infrastructure correctly. Maybe some companies just want some cheap kid who can activate a cell phone or plug wires into a tower, but those aren't the companies who NEED to care about IT.
You go to your doctor and pay him good money so he can tell you how to properly take care of your body. If your doctor tells you that you have diabetes and you continue eating sugar, you will die.
If your IT department tells you something is a bad idea there's a reason for it. You don't have to understand his logic, and he doesn't have to explain it to you. Your company pays him to understand all of that so you don't have too.
Enterprise infrastructure is extremely complex and enterprise applications are often extremely fragile. If the company could exist without their contributions I'm sure there would be no IT department.
The biggest problem is that this is a product DESIGNED to be placed in educational IT environments. As such, the product should either be designed to work in those environments with reasonable effort and without violating common security practices.
It's like marketing a car specifically to people with garages that are too small to fit the dimensions of the car. Either you make the car fit where it needs to go or you market it somewhere that fits. You DON'T market it to a demographic who can't reasonably use it. You're just making bad press for yourself.
And as a network IT guy myself we have a responsibility to maintain order on the networks we administer. Just because someone calls me down to their desk to install CCleaner on their laptop doesn't mean I'm obligated to do it. Infact I'm obligated to steer him in the right direction and make sure he understands the errors of his ways.
IT is the gatekeeper. You don't tell IT what to do... You tell them what you want to accomplish and let them tell you how to do it.