Comment Articles

Does it matter if IT matters? Yes and no

Kevin Francis ZDNet.com

Published: 31 Oct 2003 13:20 GMT

Today, IT departments are consumed by the chore of keeping the datatricity flowing. The millions of personal computers in service today are simply a necessary evil. Quite evil, in fact. Either because we didn't think far enough ahead, or because we simply weren't smart enough when we were inventing this infrastructure, we've ended up with an interlocking system of networked personal computers that are accidents waiting to happen. They must be constantly patched. They must be constantly resurrected from the "blue screen of death." And the networks they are attached to were never designed to really handle sophisticated and simple concepts like commerce, security or privacy.

And we're in denial about it. In 211 BC, the Romans felt secure because they believed Hannibal could never cross the Alps, much less during the dead of winter. Their heirs in 2003 find cold comfort in their hope that a 16-year-old sipping his cappuccino at Starbucks won't exploit RPC 135 and sack their corporate data treasury. Which leads us to another issue.

It is shameful that so many people have to know what RPC 135 is, much less how to protect it from the modern day Carthaginian army made up of teenagers with too much time on their hands and too little respect for others. Yet this is what it's come to. Thousands upon thousands of highly skilled, dedicated IT professionals spend 150 percent of their workweek playing whack-a-mole without even the slightest chance of winning.

Meanwhile, in their copious free time, they are helping out colleagues staring at frozen computers or accelerating implementation of an enterprise resource planning system so their company can run more efficiently.

Once upon a time, textile mills were located along rivers that would turn the waterwheels that turned the looms. (In an instance filled with infinite irony, the long-lost-but-once-heroic Digital Equipment was headquartered in just such a mill.) Today, the turbines of industry are turned by the information created on personal computers and passed along the network that winds its way throughout the world of commerce. But businesses are still building mills on the river banks of information.

And some companies are beginning to say, "enough."