Monday, June 11, 2007

Business Technology, Not Information Technology

Here's an interesting article that I think marks a paradigm shift in the way technology is viewed and used in large corporations.

ITPro reported on the keynote address of Forrester Research chief executive George Colony to the IT Forum EMEA 2007. In his address he noted that the future of business is less about the management of its information by means of technology, its more about technology professionals communicating with the captains of industry, those with lofty titles such as CEO or CFO, and how, when, what and where they intend to use technology in their day to day business. It shouldn't be information technology, it should be business technology.

So much of our business depends on technology that works smoothly and seamlessly integrates with our processes. According to Colony, most executives do not know how technology plays a role in their business, presently or in the future. Some countries are ahead of the curve in the number of technology savvy executives. Here in the U.S., 11 out of top 20 companies have board-level technical representation versus just 6 out of the top 20 companies in Europe.

What do I think all of this means? Colony is explaining that technology is really a means to and end. Technology is a tool and should be about what business processes it supports and the people that are using it.

2 comments:

Patrick Lee said...

Hopefully this will result in a higher profile and more appreciation for all the folks who make the technical magic happen each day.

Justin Beller said...

I hope so too.

The point of this post is the people and the business processes that utilize the boxes, miles of cable and data stored on servers around the world are ALL equally important.

What I'm trying to educate clients on is that in order to have true performance in their organizations (in regard to technology) people, processes / environments and technology must be in balance. If one of the three is more heavily biased you'll fail to reach true performance.