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By Tim Ferguson, 27 April 2007 12:30

COMMENT

Deciding to re-brand an industry worth billions is a brave move but HP has had a go, re-christening IT as 'business technology'.

According to the tech giant IT is no longer an adequate term, and its new coinage reflects the fact that technology no longer merely supports business but is actually powering it and driving growth.

The increasing role of technology in business may seem obvious, so is this shift in emphasis really worthy of a new name - as HP claims?

At the company's Technology at Work conference in Berlin this week Ann Livermore, executive vice president of HP's technology solutions group, pointed to the way the language of technology has evolved.

Livermore placed 'business technology' - so should it be BT? - in the context of other tech terms used over the years. The buzzword in the 1960s was 'data processing' which was followed by 'management information systems' in the '80s, she said.

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And now the ubiquitous term of the 1990s - 'information technology' - will suffer the same fate according to Livermore.

HP's research certainly highlights the increasing importance of IT to businesses - with 99 per cent of CEOs and 86 per cent of CIOs surveyed saying technology is integral to the success of their businesses.

As Wolfram Fisher, managing director and vice president of HP's technology solutions group, emphasised in Berlin: "Technology powers business and in many cases is business."

But only 43 per cent of CEOs and 38 per cent of CIOs said tech decisions are included in initial strategic discussions and planning. And less than half of these top execs said their companies are "very successful" in aligning technology to business outcomes, while many CIOs also suggested their bosses are only now realising IT can go beyond a merely supporting role.

'Business technology' isn't completely inaccurate in terms of describing the increasingly important role of technology, but it will be some time yet before 'IT' is replaced.

After all, information is still the key element in the technology equation.

The trick is to get CIOs and CEOs talking the same language to start with - and chances are that coming up with new buzzwords is only going to make it harder to communicate, not easier.