Information technology (IT) refers to the management and use of information using

computer-based tools. It includes acquiring, processing, storing, and distributing information.

Most commonly it is a term used to refer to business applications of computer technology,
rather than scientific applications. The term is used broadly in business to refer to anything
that ties into the use of computers.

Role of IT in Business

The role of IT is constantly evolving and has changed significantly from the days when the IT
organization was often referred to as “data processing.” Today, in many industries, IT enables
some businesses to differentiate themselves from their competitors. Those companies that
leverage IT for competitive advantage often differ from their competitors in two ways with
respect to their IT organizations: they view IT as a strategic business enabler instead of as a
cost center, and they work to maximize the efficiency of their IT operations so that they can
focus their resources on providing value to the business and respond to today’s environment
of rapidly changing business conditions.

Mostly businesses today create data that can be stored and processed on computers. In some
cases the data must be input to computers using devices such as keyboards and scanners. In
other cases the data might be created electronically and automatically stored in computers.

Small businesses generally need to purchase software packages, and may need to contract
with IT businesses that provide services such as hosting, marketing web sites and maintaining
networks. However, larger companies can consider having their own IT staffs to develop
software, and otherwise handle IT needs in-house. For instance, businesses working with the
federal government are likely to need to comply with requirements relating to making
information accessible.

Effective implementation of information technology would decrease liability by reducing the

cost of expected failures and increase flexibility by reducing the cost of adjustment. The
businesses reaction to the environment remains to be the vital determinant for its
effectiveness. The capabilities and flexibilities of computer-communication systems make
them gradually more appropriate to businesses by being able to respond to any specific
information or communication requirement.

Impact
Information Technology is having impact on all trade industries and businesses, in service as
well as in manufacturing. It is affecting workers at all levels of organizations, from the
executives to middle management and clerks. Information technology is increasingly
becoming a basic factor of all types of technologies such as craft, engineering, routine, and
non-routine. The advances in Information Technology would result in remarkable decline in
the costs of synchronization that would lead to new, concentrated business structures. It
enables the business to respond to the new and urgent competitive forces by providing
effective management of interdependence.

In the near future businesses would be facing a lack and a redundancy of information called
information glut. To solve the information-glut companies will need to introduce methods for
selective thinning out of information. Improvements in telecommunications will make it
easier to control business units dispersed over different parts of the world. Advances in
telecommunications, would result in increased distance-communication. Indirect
communication would be preferred for well-structured information for routine,
preprogrammed and decision processes.

Critical Role
Information technology (IT) plays a critical role in the current business environment for
enterprises and businesses that are looking at higher productivity and newer business models.
Different pieces of technology will increasingly collaborate to come onto a single platform.

Any company that values technology will accomplish business. It plays a very critical role as
people are interacting more with technology. The current economic situation requires IT to
enable productivity, create new business models and show other growth opportunities.

Different Technologies
There are different technologies showing a natural move towards developing countries. These
range from very personal to highly scalable. Web 2.0 collaboration is a newer way of
bringing communities together. Many people are using it in their personal life and many are
looking at bringing it to an enterprise scale. For example, video technologies, which were
primarily used at the consumer level, are now finding applications in large enterprises. IPTV,
video communication and some other interesting individual technologies are coming together
to create an enterprise scale platform where the foundation is communication and creation of
virtual workplace. These are also equally important as they are looking at scalable
technology. Collaboration is all about bringing the entire eco-system together and giving
small businesses access to resources as well as the ability to create new business models.

Indian Scenario
Corporate India consists of 5,000 large enterprises, 27,000 small and medium outfits (SMEs)
and more than seven lakh home-office set-ups. This sums up into a huge opportunity for tech
providers.
“Since Indian companies are increasingly competing in the world market, they find a need to
adhere to global best practices in their respective fields. Hence, we feel that the time is right
for us to bring our global customer insights to the Indian market,” says Shankar Ganapathy,
world-wide V-P of MicroStrategy, a $360-million US provider of business intelligence
solutions that announced the launch of its India operations a few weeks ago.
Various regulatory changes in India are creating new opportunities for technology providers
to bring in best-in-industry solutions. For instance, the Reserve Bank of India’s decision to
allow retail investors to invest in global markets requires technologies to connect broker
terminals to international exchanges and also necessitates use of advanced risk-mitigating
solutions.
According to Nasscom estimates, the domestic IT services market has grown two folds to
$8.3 billion in the three years ended March 2009. Over half of this revenue came from IT
spends by small- and medium-sized companies.
IT in today’s economy
With budgets getting cut and organizations being asked to do more with less, the first step is
to take a look at how to improve your efficiency. After all, if you can free up time by
improving or automating processes, for example, that time can be spent on activities that
provide strategic business value. The reduction in workload management costs were in the
thousands of dollars per server for high-value workloads (e.g. email, collaboration) for
mature organizations versus basic organizations. Even lower value workloads (e.g. print
sharing) showed reductions in cost in the hundreds of dollars when well managed.

Once you have a plan to optimize operations, you need to work with your business units to
understand their business needs and align IT as an enabler in meeting these needs. The
companies that, in this economic downturn, come out ahead of their competitors will be those
companies that don’t just tighten their belts to control costs, but actually invest in the
business to offer new or improved products and services. By optimizing IT, that enables the
company to leverage the use of IT in its investments. Obviously there are some business
requirements that must be addressed, such as GRC-related (Governance, Risk Management
and Compliance) requirements. But there also needs to be effort and investment to improve
the quality of service and agility that IT provides the business.

In summary, I feel that in today’s economy IT organizations should do the following:

• Optimize, optimize, optimize! Assess your operations to evaluate where you can
implement best practices to improve efficiency and free up resources to work on more
strategic activities. Talk to your Microsoft account team if you would like Microsoft’s
assistance to evaluate how you can optimize your infrastructure.
• Align IT with the business units within your company. Now more than ever it is
important that the business views IT as a strategic enabler for the business to
distinguish itself from its competitors. Review with the business executives the
challenges and opportunities they face to identify how IT can be leveraged to address
these challenges and opportunities.
• Invest in IT. Those companies investing in IT during this economy are the companies
that will survive the downturn and then excel as the economy improves. And by
optimizing your infrastructure first, you have the opportunity to invest by shifting
resources from sustaining to strategic activities.

Conclusion:
In today’s highly competitive economic environment having the right IT in business is a
critical element of success. All businesses deal with some of the new technology whether it is
just a basic computer system or highly sophisticated software to track sales from the time the
initial contact is made until they close.
The IT in business solutions are available and affordable for businesses both large and small.
It is important to do some research to find the right company with a good reputation and that
provides the services needed. Once that is done, any business can make the necessary moves
to get a step ahead of the competition.