[TriLUG] [OT] What's the value of IT?

[Phillip Rhodes]

William Sutton wrote:
> What, exactly, are you looking for?  The ability of IT to provide 
> information support services to help a company be more efficient?  The 
> actual IT services businesses implement to accomplish their goals?  

So what I'm getting at is this:  Why do companies have IT at all?  One
answer is, as you mentioned above, "to be more efficient."  Another 
would be "to extend the reach of our company," and another might be
"to build deeper relationships with our customers."

I'd be curious to see other people's take on the *really* high level
reasons why, as well as lower level tactical implementations (which 
could probably be categorized at the higher level as well).

I should probably back up and say this...  if I write the book
I'm picturing in my head, it would be a book with a goal of justifying
the existence / use of computing technology in business, and written
for people who don't necessarily intuit all the ways computing
can benefit their business.  I think that - for people like us (geeks) -
it seems so obvious why we use computers, that we never even bother
to ask the question.  But I suspect that some (many?) small
business owners don't appreciate the use of computing (or appreciate
it only at the most naive level).



TTYL,


-- 
Phillip Rhodes