A Brief History of IT Value

CIO, February, 2006 by Elana Varon

The English philosopher Francis Bacon in 1597 proposed that knowledge is power, and that the pursuit of scientific knowledge would lead mankind to master its environment. Some 400 years later, a corollary to Bacon's proposition has become the guiding principle of IT: Data is power, and it's the job of the IT department to develop systems that collect and distribute data so that we may master our competitors.

But day in and day out, the demands of systems and schedules, bugs and budgets—just getting the job done—can distract even the most visionary CIO from technology's greater purpose. According to David Foote, president and chief research officer with Foote Partners, which studies the IT labor market, IT departments until recently tended to hire more experts in the...

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